Germany’s problem is not so much that it is generally right about the need for fiscal discipline but that it has to learn how to be right: this is the most difficult issue to manage from a political standpoint.

This EPIN (European Policy Institutes Network) paper brings together contributions from a cross-section of EU member states and the Gallup World Poll survey on the question of how Germany is being viewed at this time of economic and political crisis.

This paper considers the most important changes brought by the Treaty of Lisbon to the functioning of the Court of Justice of the European Union. These changes concern the internal organisation of the institution, the appointment of its members and the extension of its jurisdiction in the areas of freedom, security and justice, foreign and security policy, as well as its new power to protect fundamental rights.
 

The paper is written in French, prefaced by a two-page synopsis in English.

Recent decades have witnessed a dramatic growth of internet-based communication. This phenomenon and its still partially unexplored potential have increasingly attracted the attention of a growing number of political entrepreneurs. This paper analyses to what extent it has characterised vertical communication between politicians and voters looking at a very particular group: the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs).

This paper argues against the view that Bulgaria’s EU accession was premature and that the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) is not delivering. The EU’s continued leverage and the efficacy of the CVM are explained in a framework that goes beyond the dual-conditionality paradigm of incentives and sanctions, and beyond the unitary players model of EU-Bulgarian relations. In this framework, the CVM is viewed as an instrument for supportive reinforcement rather than for the imposition of sanctions.

The codecision procedure has grown in importance and scope since its inception in 1992. At first characterised by inter-institutional mistrust, the codecision procedure today is used to settle quick political agreements informally between the Parliament and the Council. This new negotiation culture means closer cooperation between the Parliament and the Council, but presents serious challenges for the Commission.

The Barroso Commission is coming to an end. At this stage it is impossible to foresee when the end will be or if the new (old) Commission President will be (re)elected in July 2009 by the new European Parliament. Nevertheless, based on contributions of national experts in 25 EU member states, a picture emerges of a European Commission that has become politically weakened vis-à-vis the other institutions and in the Union as a whole.

The success of an EU Presidency depends closely on the cooperation it achieves with other actors in the European political arena. This paper analyses the cooperation established between Slovenian public servants and diplomats and their European counterparts during their country’s term in office as Presidency of the EU in the first half of 2008. The findings are based on a survey conducted among 667 Slovenian public servants, experts and diplomats directly involved in the policy-making process during Slovenia’s Presidency.

Agencies of the European Union have been developed in response to the deepening of the internal market, which caused a significant expansion of tasks in various policy areas and engendered strain on the functioning of the Commission as the engine of the integration process. But the system of European agencies is ambiguous and lacks a common framework. Instead, the system has been developed on a case by case basis, resulting in a very heterogeneous situation concerning, inter alia, European agencies’ functions, decision-making powers and structures.

Using post-enlargement Eurobarometer data, this paper explores public support for deepening and widening across the EU. In particular, it tries to answer the following questions: 1) Do citizens perceive a trade-off between deepening and widening? 2) Is there a gap between elite discourses and citizen perceptions regarding deepening and widening? 3) What fears lay behind citizens’ preferences for deepening versus widening?

The authors of this new EPIN paper argue for a thorough reappraisal of flexibility as an instrument of integration and outline the conditions under which it would help the enlarged European Union to move forward. In particular, treaty-based ‘enhanced cooperation’ should be regarded as a useful tool that avoids many of the potentially disintegrating effects of purely intergovernmental approaches. In a Union of soon-to-be 27 members, enhanced cooperation could turn the idea of flexible integration from a measure of threat to a real opportunity for deeper integration.

Since EPIN’s first monitoring report in January, the issue of the European Constitution has grown in relevance and visibility in many member states. Yet there continue to be important differences in how the individual aspects of the text are perceived in the various national debates. This update of EPIN’s survey on the progress and obstacles to ratification of the European Constitutional Treaty provides a snapshot of the approval processes in the different EU member states at a crucial point in time, just before the vote in France and the Netherlands.