European Union Politics

Publisher:: Sage Publications, Inc.
Publication date:: 2021-09-06

ISBN:: 1465-1165

Issue Number

No. 25-2, June 2024

Latest documents

The Greek crisis as a “morality tale”? An empirical assessment
Credit and debt are more than just material exchanges within a market economy, they are also social constructs embedded in moral judgments about the character of the agents involved. During the recent European Sovereign Bond crisis, some commentators noted how a similarly loaded moral media discourse juxtaposed “virtuous” Northern European countries on the one side, and “spendthrift, lazy” Southern European ones on the other side. In this article, I provide a quantitative large-N empirical assessment of this phenomenon. I employ a dictionary-based approach inspired by research in social psychology to measure moral content. Upon analyzing more than 14,000 articles published in the Anglo-American and German financial press between 2004 and 2019, I show the extent to which Greece was described in negative moral language. After the initial “shock” in the fall of 2009, the average moral tone turns negative, and more so in the German financial press relative to its Anglo-American counterpart. Moreover, by most measures, it never completely reverts to pre-crisis levels, thus suggesting how “sticky” economic narratives can become. Against the original expectations, though, there is no evidence that the financial press framed the last and most acute phase of the Greek crisis in 2015 in increasingly moral terms.
The effect of trilogues on the European Commission's success in legislative negotiations: A reappraisal
Informal negotiations have become the norm in the European Union legislative process. Yet, researchers are divided over the effects of this change on the European Commission's ability to defend the content of its proposals from modifications by the co-legislators. This article addresses this puzzle by using a fine-grained measure of whether informal negotiations took place which includes trivial agreements, namely legislation adopted in first reading because the co-legislators agree on the content, as a specific category. The results suggest that informal negotiations do not lead to more changes to the Commission's proposals than the formal process. This calls for a better consideration of trivial agreements in studies of the European Union legislative process.
Social benefits for European Union immigrants? A survey experiment on misperceptions
Using new experimental panel data for Germany, I investigate the role of income misperceptions for welfare restrictive preferences toward European Union immigrants. A majority of respondents misperceive their relative income position in Germany and the European Union and demand that European Union immigrants work and pay taxes before obtaining equal rights to social benefits. Randomized treatments inform subjects about their position in the national and European Union income distribution. My results provide evidence that welfare restrictive preferences are formed in the context of misperceived own income positions: Respondents become more welfare restrictive when they learn about a higher national or lower European Union income position. Information about European Union misperceptions has a persistent treatment effect after 3 months, driven by respondents with larger initial misperceptions, but becomes insignificant after one year.
Is Europe raising its voice? EU representation at the UN prior to and post-Lisbon
The ‘High Representative’ speaks on behalf of the European Union in international organizations since 2010. The motivation for this reform has been to strengthen the European Union's foreign policy representation. It can be expected that this empowerment of the High Representative has affected the content of official European Union speeches held at the United Nations. Did the reform lead to a more coherent and cohesive representation of European Union foreign policy at the United Nations? To answer this question, I analyze the content of all speeches held on behalf of the European Union in the United Nations General Assembly between 1993 and 2021. I find that European Union foreign policy priorities are more coherently and cohesively represented since the Lisbon reforms took effect. I argue that the empowerment of the ‘High Representatives’ and their diplomats caused this effect. Today, European Union representatives are less likely to follow global trends but set their own thematic priorities by focusing on the areas of disarmament, sustainable development, and international law.
The Eurodisappointed: On the disenchantment with the EU's limited response to democratic backsliding
Some defenders of democratic rights and the rule of law are becoming increasingly frustrated by the European Union's inadequate response to democratic backsliding in countries like Poland and Hungary. This study focuses on Poland and introduces the concept of ‘Eurodisappointment’ to describe this new group, which is conceptually and empirically distinct from Euroscepticism. Rather than being Eurosceptic, the Eurodisappointed self-limit their Euroenthusiasm without opposing integration. Drawing on original survey data, we demonstrate that Eurodisappointment is particularly prevalent among women, opposition party voters, and those dissatisfied with the state of democracy in Poland. It is yet to be seen whether and how the concept of Eurodisappointment can be applied to studies of attitudes towards the European Union in other member states.
Free to move, reluctant to share: Unequal opposition to transnational rights under the EU's free movement principle
Free movement is simultaneously widely acclaimed and strongly contested in the European Union. To address this apparent contradiction, we unpack European Union freedom of movement into its different transnational rights and argue that opposition is unequal across entitlements. Using evidence from a unique survey conducted in the United Kingdom in 2017, we show that citizens mainly contest welfare access. This transnational right implies costs for the host country and taps into perceptions of belonging and deservingness. Due to its association with ideas of national community and solidarity, access to welfare is more contested even among those who, in principle, should be favourable to such entitlements: inclusive national identifiers and European integration supporters. Our findings underscore the challenge of creating a sense of European community that could underpin all transnational rights implied by the Union's principle of freedom of movement.
Europe around the corner? How border proximity and quality of government explains European identity
Do citizens that live close to the border of another European country feel more European? We suggest that border proximity affects European identity formation, but that the positive effect of border proximity is confined largely to areas where citizens live close to regions with better quality of government and lower levels of corruption. Using our newly collected individual level and post-coded data from the most recent wave of the European Quality of Government survey, covering over 129,000 respondents in all 27 European Union member countries, we show that citizens that live close to the border of another country express a stronger European identity, all things being equal. Yet the effect is driven largely by citizens that live adjacent to regions with relatively higher/lower quality of government compared to their own region. Our study thereby contributes to a closer understanding of where and why citizens become attached to Europe, and if and how benchmarking institutional performance and quality of government affect citizens’ willingness to belong to, and identify with, Europe.
The EU Commission: Supplying enforcement and demanding compliance
During the last 20 years, the European Union has been mired in crisis after crisis. At the same time, the number of infringement procedures, the formal requests from the European Commission to member states for compliance, decreased dramatically, despite the addition of 10 member states in 2004. Yet, the link between crises and Commission enforcement activity has not been systematically examined. In this article, I theorize about the role of time, and demonstrate that crises limit the Commission's ability to act as guardian of the treaties. However, crises are not deterministic in nature – the European Parliament and European Union citizens can alter the costs of Commission enforcement. I find that as Euroscepticism increases, the Commission's demand for compliance decreases, in part due to the steep reputational costs to the Commission when member states refuse compliance, especially after sanctions. The number of infringements is also positively correlated with European Parliament action, suggesting that even without formal sanctioning power, the European Parliament plays a role in European Union law enforcement.
Between common responsibility and national interest: When do Europeans support a common European migration policy?
The European Union has progressively communitarised its migration policy. The formation of public support for this integration of a core state power presents an intricate puzzle. On the one hand, immigration is part and parcel of the conflict around the opening and closing of nation states, and thereby mobilises nativist views and Euroscepticism. On the other hand, the European Union may serve as a shield against external threats such as uncontrolled immigration. This article sheds light on this conundrum by examining how refugee arrivals affect public support for a common European migration policy across 28 European Union member states between 1992 and 2021. The results lend support to a post-functionalist logic of an identitarian backlash against integration and a collective action logic of instrumental solidarity in line with national interests.
The imbalanced effect of politicization: How EU politicization favours Eurosceptic parties
This article investigates how the systemic politicization of the EU is associated with support for different political parties. We argue that, while politicization involves actions by both Eurosceptic and Europhile parties, it does not affect parties at both extremes of the continuum in the same way. To investigate these differentiated effects, we leverage data from the European Elections Study and the Chapel Hill expert survey covering two decades (1999 to 2019). The evidence supports the hypothesis that, when it comes to voters’ preferences, politicization strongly favours Eurosceptic parties. We conclude that the systemic politicization of European issues is thus a one-way street leading to the reinforcement of the constraining dissensus on the EU.