Carlos Closa

Why Convene Referendums? Explaining Choices in EU Constitutional Politics

ABSTRACT Referendums are not the most common instrument of democracy in EU member states. In spite of this, the negotiation of the EU Constitution prompted a number of governmental choices of this mechanism for ratification of the new treaty and no less than ten governments announced their intention to use it. The reasons for these choices must be looked for in domestic political circumstances and, more precisely, in the non-existence of solid parliamentary majorities and disputes within the ruling parties, as well as in the perception of an electoral advantage on the part of government parties. Additionally, the force of arguments for the need to ratify a constitution by means of a referendum and the imitation of the path followed in other countries played an important part in these choices.

In a Spirit of Solidarity? Justifying the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in National Parliamentary Debates

This article examines national parliamentarians’ approval of the increased budgetary capacity of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) in autumn 2011. Following the analysis of vote outcome and plenary debates in 11 euro states, it is found that the financial position of a state (creditors versus debtors) does not explain the patterns of support and opposition. Rather, two other factors account for these differences: Euroscepticism, and the government and opposition cleavage. In particular, whereas Eurosceptic MPs voted and argued against the EFSF, the parliamentary majorities supported it. Surprisingly, although the legal basis of the EFSF draws on solidarity among the European Union Member States, the supporters of the EFSF did not refer to this principle in their speeches but rather to pragmatic considerations such as national economic interests.

Reinforcing Rule of Law Oversight in the European Union

This paper provides a critical overview of options available to the EU to deal with the Rule of Law crisis in some of the Member States. The options it engages with were offered and discussed by a handful of the leading experts in the field and drawing on the critical EUI discussion, the first part of the paper tackles the following questions:1. Why should the EU reinforce the oversight of Member States’ Rule of Law performance?2. Are there sufficient legal bases for such oversight – should a reform of the Treaties be required?3. What kind of procedure could be designed to meet the need of such oversight?4. Which body should be entrusted with the oversight function?The second part provides a word of caution warning of the possible problems related to the EUs involvement with the constitutional core of the Member States

International Limits to National Claims in EU Constitutional Negotiations: The Spanish Government and the Asylum Right for EU citizens

An examination of EU constitutional negotiations allows for the identification of influences behind specific outcomes. A close inspection of particular issues demonstrates the necessity to revise purely realistic and instrumental approaches that focus primarily on formal negotiators, that is, national governments. Other actors, such as interest groups, can enter the negotiation arena by using empowering resources that are alternatives to state power. In some cases, such as the discussion of asylum rights for EU nationals during the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference, interest groups joined the negotiation and did not pursue self-interest, but rather sought to design broader constitutional principles of the EU. The formal negotiator, the Spanish government, was faced with pressure from these groups that emanated from a set of international norms and moral beliefs that underpinned their claims. Their success is significant, not only because they diluted the Spanish governments proposal, but because their performance demonstrated important characteristics of a maturing European civil society.

Dealing with the Past: Memory and European Integration

Memory has become an object of dispute in the EU. Different groups and states do not have a full convergence of views and this raises the question as to whether the EU should or should not be involved. A pluralist conception of justice would argue that the recognition of memory is not excluded as a form of justice. Adopting this view, this paper argues that the recognition of memory can be addressed at the EU level if the different components of justice are allocated to the proper spheres (recognition, retribution and recognition) and levels (national and European).

Changing EU internal borders through democratic means

Abstract Demands for secession from EU member states create a novel situation for the demarcation of the internal borders of the Union. When combined with withdrawal of the original state from the EU, this adds the complexity of simultaneously re-drawing internal and external borders. Situation differ among the territories in which political actors have voiced desires for independence combined with EU membership and the two basic differentiating criteria refer to the existence of consent/agreement with the original member state and the latter willingness of remaining or not an EU member. The combination of these two criteria produce four scenarios for which EU policy in relation to granting membership should also differ. I argue that the EU should have the most positive attitude in cases combining consent and withdrawal of the original member state whilst cases lacking consent seem incompatible with EU values even though some nuances can be introduced.

Overseeing the Rule of Law in the EU: Legal Mandate and Means

Controversial changes in the laws of Poland and Hungary have deepened concerns about disregard for the rule of law in the European Union. This analysis discusses what the EU is legally entrusted to do to address the issue. It recalls that Member States have endowed the Union with a legal mandate to ensure respect for the rule of law. It also suggests that the EU has various means at its disposal to fulfil such mandate, which in many ways remain to be used. * Christophe Hillion is Senior Researcher at SIEPS, Professor of European Law at the Universities of Leiden & Gothenburg, and visiting research Professor at NUPI / Centre for European Law, University of Oslo. ** Thanks to Anne Myrjord for all her support. The final version of this paper will be published in C Closa and D Kochenov (eds) Reinforcing Rule of Law Oversight in the European Union (Cambridge: CUP, 2016). 1 See the letter of the Foreign Ministers of Denmark, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands, of 6 March in the 2013, to the President of the European Commission. The letter can be found here: [http://www.rijksoverheid. nl/bestanden/documenten-en-publicaties/brieven/2013/03/13/brief-aaneuropese-commissie-over-opzettenrechtsstatelijkheidsmechanisme/brief-aan-europese-commissieover-opzetten-rechtsstatelijkheidsmechanisme.pdf ] 2 Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament, A new EU framework to strengthen the Rule of Law, COM(2014)158 final. 3 http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-16-71_en.htm 4 Conclusions of the Council of the European Union and the Member States meeting within the Council on Ensuring Respect for the Rule of Law, General Affairs Council meeting, Brussels, 16 Dec. 2014. Different proposals have also been made within the European Parliament: see Tavares report on the situation of fundamental rights: standards and practices in Hungary (2012/2130(INI)), 24.06.2013); and the ‘EU democratic governance pact’ proposed by the ALDE group (http://www.alde.eu/event-seminar/events-details/article/an-eudemocratic-governance-pact-44603/). 5 General Affairs Council, Ensuring the respect for the rule of law Dialogue and exchange of views, 17 November 2015, doc. 13744/15.

The politics of guarding the Treaties: Commission scrutiny of rule of law compliance

This paper is part of the project Institutional design in comparative regional integration (InDeCRI) (CSO2016-76130-P) https://www.researchgate.net/project/Institutional-Design-in-Comparative-Regional-Integration-InDeCRI which is supported by a grant from the Spanish Research Agency. I presented a former version of this paper with the title The Commission and article 7. Explaining inaction … praising action? at EUSA, Miami 4-6 May 2017 and the ECPR General Conference, Oslo 6-9 September 2017. I thank Tanja Borzel, Johannes Pollack and the participants in both panels for their insightful comments; to Elin Helquist for her insights into sanctions literature to her and Daniela Vintila for their kind comments on an earlier draft. Two JEPP anonymous referees have also provided excellent feedback on the article.ABSTRACT Commissions expectations on eventual compliance explain its different behaviour when dealing with Rule of Law (RoL) crises in Hungary and Poland. Whilst the Commission activated the first stage of the procedure of article 7 against Poland in December 2017, it resisted to launch the same procedure against the Hungarian government despite mounting criticism and demands from both academics and EU institutions. The Commission considers that compliance depends, on last instance, on the cooperation of domestic authorities. Accordingly, it prefers to engage with them in dialogue and persuasion rather than activating enforcement mechanisms. If engagement strategies fail to obtain compliance, the Commission anticipates the consequence of activating article 7 enforcement: whether it can rely or not on Council support and the effects of not having it and it also anticipates negative consequences such as the future attitude of the affected member state vis-á-vis the EU.

Spanish Citizenship: Democracy-building and Plural Nationhood in the European Context

The refashioning of democratic citizenship in Spain after the end of the Franco regime does not follow traditional models of citizen building. The innovations concern a number of issues, such as the complex relationship between identity and rights, the validity of the Marshallian sequence of rights creation, and the role of social struggles and of constructivist approaches to the making of citizens. As the introduction to this volume argues, three issues dominated the interaction between state and civil society during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and contributed to the formation of the modern conception of citizenship. These were the emergence of the nation-state as the dominant political context; the development of commercial and industrialized societies, and the growth of social democracy. In Spain, at the time of the transition to democracy in the mid-1970s, none of these questions had been fully resolved. Traditional Spanish national values and symbols played only a secondary role in their settlement, for the twentieth-century experience of citizenship-building was perceived as a break in the nation’s history requiring a reconstruction of the democratic state on the entirely new foundations established by the 1978 Constitution.