Christian Joerges

From Intergovernmental Bargaining to Deliberative Political Processes: The Constitutionalisation of Comitology

Abstract: This article argues that the irresistible rise of Comitology is an institutional response to the deep-seated tensions between the dual supranational and intergovernmentalist structure of the Community on the one hand, and its problem-solving tasks on the other. Comitology has accordingly provided a forum in which problems are addressed through evolving and novel processes of interest formation and decision-making. However, neither legal nor political science have been able properly to evaluate the workings of the committee system, both disciplines remaining trapped within normative structures and traditional methodologies ill-suited to the analysis of these institutional innovations. As a consequence, this article advocates the trans-disciplinary study of Comitology, and furthermore argues that the two disciplines might be drawn together by the concept of deliberative supranationalism: being on the one hand a normative approach which seeks both to preserve the legitimacy of national democracies and to set limits upon the traditional Nation State within a supranational community; and on the other, a theoretical tool which is nonetheless responsive to and accomodating of real-world phenomena.

Transforming strategic interaction into deliberative problem-solving: European comitology in the foodstuffs sector

The central argument of this contribution is that core institutional features of the European Community (EC) should be read as supranational versions of deliberationist ideals. After outlining a normative perspective for institutional innovations, we argue that deliberative supranationalism is already more than Utopia. We substantiate this claim by briefly outlining a deliberative supranationalist analysis of comitology in the foodstuffs sector. It is argued that comitology is indicative of the emergence of a deliberative style of European regulatory policy-making which aims at building up co-ordination capacities, establishing a culture of inter-administrative partnership, and creating conditions in which the organizations responsible for managing particular policies are able to meet emerging challenges. Emphasis therefore is placed on identifying areas of interdependence and common interest with the aim of ensuring the coherence and reliability of the European management network in the foodstuffs sector...

Law and governance in postnational Europe : compliance beyond the nation-state

List of tables Notes on contributors Preface 1. Introduction: law and compliance at different levels Michael Zurn 2. The analysis of compliance with international rules: definitions, variables and methodology Jurgen Neyer and Dieter Wolf 3. State aid control at the national, European and international level Dieter Wolf 4. Domestic limits of supranational law: comparing compliance with European and international foodstuffs regulations Jurgen Neyer 5. Politics of intergovernmental redistribution: comparing compliance with European and federal redistributive regulations Jurgen Neyer 6. Conclusions - the conditions of compliance Michael Zurn and Jurgen Neyer 7. Compliance research in legal perspectives Christian Joerges References Index.

‘Deliberative Supranationalism’—Two Defences

This paper responds in its first sections1 to a series of articles in which Rainer Schmalz‐Bruns developed a concept of legitimate governance beyond the constitutional state, which he called ‘deliberative supranationalism’ and contrasted with what Jurgen Neyer and the present author had suggested under the same title. The Epilogue of the paper first comments on more recent critiques brought forward especially by contributors to this Special Issue of the ELJ and then on the programmatic rejection of comitology by the European Commission’s White Paper on Governance in the EU.1 Our querelles allemandes were not specifically Teutonic: while Schmalz‐Bruns presented his approach as a systematic elaboration of the theories of deliberative democracy, based, in particular, on recent contributions by Joshua Cohen, Michael Dorf, and Charles Sabel,1 Jurgen Neyer and I had offered an interpretation of institutional innovations and decision‐making practices as observed in the European market‐building project. This discussion has had precursors and follow‐ups in various contexts, among both lawyers and political scientists. This essay should hence be understood as a contribution to an ongoing debate.

The Impact of European Integration on Private Law: Reductionist Perceptions, True Conflicts and a New Constitutional Perspective

If private law is defined simply as a matter of core areas such as substantive contract, torts, property or family law, it may be doubted whether European law has significantly affected national private law systems; or conversely, whether national private law is relevant to European integration. However, this paper argues that such conclusions are misleading: while there have been very few European interventions into the core areas of civil codes or the common law, the integration process has impacted forcefully upon deeper structures of national legal systems. Challenging the institutional embeddedness of national private law, European primary and regulatory law has remodelled (public) concepts of private autonomy, the realm of private governance and the social responsibility of private actors. How then to present and evaluate this indirect impact? Drawing upon concrete examples, this paper seeks first to understand this European challenge to the interdependence of national private law, borrowing from political sciences analytical tool of multi‐level governance to highlight the complex interrelations between European rights and regulatory law and national private law; and secondly attempts actively to assess the legitimacy of the impact of integration upon private law with the aid of the explicitly normative theory of deliberative supranationalism. However, precisely because Europe remains in a state of flux, and dependent upon contingent political processes, no final conclusions are drawn: as is the case with so many areas subject to integrationist logic, the contours of the ‘new European private law’ cannot be laid down in advance, and are instead a long and weary matter of cooperation and fine‐tuning between national and European judiciaries.

Von intergouvernementalem Verhandeln zur deliberativen Politik: Gründe und Chancen für eine Konstitutionalisierung der europäischen Komitologie

Die rechts- und politikwissenschaftliche Forschung auf dem Gebiet der gemeinschaftlichen Ausschusse im allgemeinen und der Komitologie im besonderen hat in jungster Zeit — dem augenscheinlich unaufhaltsamen Aufstieg ihres Gegenstandes entsprechende — Zuwachsraten zu verzeichnen.1 Zu einer rechtlichen Beurteilung, die Juristen als „herrschende Meinung“, zu analytischen und praxeologischen Ansatzen, die Politologen als wegweisend apostrophieren und vorstellen konnten, erst recht: zu einem die beiden Disziplinen ubergreifenden Konsens haben all diese Bemuhungen nicht gefuhrt. Das ist angesichts der Komplexitat des Gegenstandes auch nicht zu erwarten. Auch unser Beitrag kann derart weitreichende Erwartungen nicht erfullen. Er versucht vielmehr, das Dickicht komplexer Fragestellungen mit Hilfe einer Art Doppelstrategie zu lichten: Wir haben den Untersuchungsbereich — die Regulierung von Gesundheitsrisiken im Lebensmittelsektor — relativ eng umrissen, um ihn gehaltvoll beschreiben zu konnen; wir werden andererseits den auf den ersten Blick eher unscheinbaren Gegenstand theoretisch anspruchsvoll von verschiedenen Perspektiven aus beleuchten. Der gewahlte Bereich bietet sich aus zwei Grunden an: Zum einen befindet sich der Lebensmittelsektor derzeit an einem Scheidepunkt, weil Marktentwicklungs-Interessen intensiver als je zuvor mit regulativen Anforderungen und dem Aufbau einer dementsprechenden europaisierten Regulierungsmaschinerie konfrontiert werden.2 Zum anderen rangierte die „Vollendung“ des gemeinschaftlichen Lebensmittelmarktes schon lange so hoch auf der gemeinschaftlichen Tagesordnung, das wir es hier tatsachlich mit einem legislativ weitgehend vollendetem Regelungsgefuge zu tun haben. „Vollendet“ i.S. von komplett: Der gesetzliche Rahmen ist derart vollstandig, das die regulative Politik sich jetzt auf seine „Durchfuhrung“ konzentrieren kann.

Rechtsstaat and Social Europe: How a Classical Tension Resurfaces in the European Integration Process

Will the welfare state survive European Integration? The paper seeks to put this currently intense debate into constitutional perspectives. It starts with a reconstruction of the debat fondateur in post-war Germany on the new Basic Law, which was focused on alleged or real tensions of welfarism with Rechtsstaatlichkeit, the commitment to rule of law. This is the background for the discussion in Section II on legal categories, which Fritz Scharpf has characterised as a decoupling of economic integration from the various welfare traditions of Member States. The third section analyses the ECJ’s recent labour law jurisprudence with its interpretation of the supremacy of European freedoms and its rigid interpretation of pertinent secondary legislation. These controversial moves are bound to provoke fierce opposition on the part of the protagonists of “Social Europe.”

The European Economic Constitution and Its Transformation Through the Financial Crisis

The idea of an “economic constitution” was developed by a group of German economists and lawyers in the Weimar Republic which sought a “third way” – the “ordo-liberal way” – between laissez-faire liberalism and socialist politics. Ordo-liberalism survived the Third Reich untainted. In the 1950s, Ordo-liberalism was complemented by the concept of the social market economy. In the formative phase of the EEC, ordo-liberal scholars started to promote the ensemble of European economic freedoms and a system of undistorted competition as the constitutional core of the European integration project. The Economic and Monetary Union, as accomplished by the Maastricht Treaty, was expected to complete this project. However, the entire edifice soon proved to be much more vulnerable than its advocates had promised. Following the financial and the sovereign debt crises, EMU with its commitments to price stability and monetary politics is perceived as a failed construction precisely because of its reliance on inflexible rules. European crisis management seeks to compensate for these failures by means of regulatory machinery which disregards the European order of competences, disempowers national institutions, burdens, in particular, Southern Europe with austerity measures; it establishes pan-European commitments to budgetary discipline and macroeconomic balancing. The ideal of a legal ordering of the European economy is thus abolished while the economic and social prospects of these efforts seem gloomy and the Union’s political legitimacy becomes precarious.

Recht, Wirtschaft und Politik im Prozess der Konstitutionalisierung Europas

Politikwissenschaftler, die sich mit Europa befassen, sollten das Recht nicht ubersehen. Dieses Pladoyer ist heute ebenso richtig wie bei der Erstauflage dieses Bandes im Jahre 1996. Gleichzeitig sind aber Entwicklungen zu bedenken, die auch die Funktionen des Rechts im Integrationsprozess angehen.

Re-conceptualising Europeanisation as a Public Law of Collisions: Comitology, Agencies and an Interactive Public Adjudication

Book synopsis: This book is a unique contribution to the understanding of the reality of government and governance in the European Union (EU).