George Ross

Functionalism vs Westphalia: the looking glass of employment policy

Many key ideas in the Lisbon strategy can be traced back to the Delors Commissions 1993 White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment, arguably the EUs first major effort to confront the economic and social realities of globalisation. At the time the White Paper failed to achieve the results it sought. However, the core of the White Papers labour market issues were taken up by the Amsterdam Treaty which initiated the European Employment Strategy and its innovative methodology, the open method of coordination (OMC). The Lisbon strategy, which followed soon thereafter, broadened this approach into a new mission to enhance the competitiveness of the EU which used the OMC extensively. However, EU Member States, zealous of their prerogatives in economic, labour market and social policies, were unwilling to grant the EU level significant roles for transnational coordination and implementation in these areas. The results have not matched the outpouring of support for Lisbon from progressive intellectuals and centre-left politicians. In the critical policy areas that the 1993 White Paper, the EES and the Lisbon strategy have addressed, contradictions between intergovernmentalism and the need for European coordination have led to suboptimal results. Il apparaît quun certain nombre didées phares de la stratégie de Lisbonne découlent du Livre blanc “Croissance, compétitivité et emploi” de la Commission Delors de 1993, dont on pourrait dire quil a été le premier grand effort de lUnion européenne de mettre en présence les réalités économiques et sociales de la globalisation. A lépoque, le Livre blanc nétait pas parvenu à atteindre les résultats escomptés. Cependant, le noyau des problèmes du marché de lemploi soulevés par le Livre blanc avait été abordé par le Traité dAmsterdam, qui a initié la Stratégie européenne de lemploi et sa méthodologie innovatrice, la méthode ouverte de coordination (MOC). Peu après, la Stratégie de Lisbonne a élargi cette approche, lui conférant une mission nouvelle visant à améliorer la compétitivité de lUnion européenne, qui sest largement appuyée sur la MOC. Les Etats membres de lUE, jaloux de leurs prérogatives en matière de politiques économiques, de marché du travail et de politiques sociales, se sont refusés à ce que lUE soit impliquée de manière significative dans la coordination et la mise en óuvre transnationales dans ces domaines. Les résultats nont en rien égalé le soutien massif à Lisbonne apporté par les intellectuels progressistes et des politiciens de centre-gauche. Dans les domaines politiques sensibles abordés par le Livre blanc de 1993, la SEE et la stratégie de Lisbonne, des contradictions entre linter-gouvernementalisme et le besoin dune coordination au niveau européen ont débouché sur des résultats décevants. Viele der zentralen Ideen der Lissabon-Strategie finden ihren Ursprung im Weißbuch über Wachstum, Wettbewerbsfähigkeit und Beschäftigung der Kommission unter Jacques Delors – der ersten großen Anstrengung der EU, um die wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Herausforderungen im Zuge der Globalisierung anzugehen. Die vom Weißbuch angestrebten Ergebnisse wurden damals nicht erreicht, aber der Kern der dort enthaltenen Arbeitsmarktfragen fand Eingang in den Vertrag von Amsterdam, der die Europäische Beschäftigungsstrategie (EBS) und ihre innovative Methode – die offene Methode der Koordinierung (OMK) – ins Leben rief. Bald darauf folgte die Lissabon-Strategie, die diesen Ansatz im Rahmen einer neuen Aufgabe, nämlich der Steigerung der Wettbewerbsfähigkeit der EU, ausweitete und eine breite Anwendung der OMK vorsah. Bedacht auf ihre Vorrechte im Bereich der Wirtschafts-, Arbeitsmarkt-und Sozialpolitik waren die EU-Mitgliedstaaten jedoch nicht geneigt, der EU in diesen Bereichen eine wichtige Rolle bei der transnationalen Koordinierung und Umsetzung zu übertragen. Die Ergebnisse entsprachen nicht der überwältigenden Unterstützung, welche die Lissabon-Strategie bei progressiven Intellektuellen und Mitte-Links-Politikern fand. Widersprüche zwischen zwischenstaatlichem Ansatz und dem Bedarf an einer Koordinierung auf europäischer Ebene haben dazu geführt, dass in den kritischen Politikbereichen, auf die sich das Weißbuch von 1993, die EBS und die Lissabon-Strategie bezogen, nur suboptimale Ergebnisse erzielt wurden.

EU Futures: Exiting Crisis, Mastering Globalization

We did not press our respondents about what they thought the EU’s future might or should look like. Many insisted on discussing these issues, however. They often did so in fragments appended to other reflections, more feelings than complex argumentation. What they said was revelatory, however. There were two recurrent themes. One was about the shorter-term need to dig the EU out of the deep holes created by the long, unproductive, and politically dangerous debate on institutional reform characterized by the referendum defeats of the European Constitutional Treaty. The other was long-term concern and hope about the EU’s place in the world, when the EU found itself at a crossroads. It could no longer be fully successful if it continued on its traditional inward market-building trajectory alone, because post-Cold War events and rapid globalization had begun a vast international reshuffling of cards in geostrategic position and economic significance. Many respondents felt that the EU would be less and less relevant unless it proved able to reconfigure its outlooks to meet these two challenges.

Institutions: Virtues, Vices, and Rebalancing

Two-thirds of our respondents believed that institutional problems were an important reason for the EU’s difficulties. This theme was undoubtedly more salient because they were talking when alarm bells from referendums on the European Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands still echoed. Respondents had many ways of analyzing these defeats and pointed fingers of blame in different directions. Talking about the French referendum usually began with tales of bad leaders, mentioning Chirac and Jospin by name, who were seen as indifferent, perhaps even hostile, to European integration. Respondents also thought that voters had been misled by politicians who sometimes saw referendums as occasions to position themselves politically for their own future, as some French leaders had done, with their eyes on the 2007 presidential election. In the Netherlands, the government, led by Jan-Peter Balkanende, was also ineffectual and the political elites, who had never held a national referendum, had been puzzled about how to proceed. Beyond such factors, however, it was clear that the French and Dutch were worried about the future of their social models and that many voters saw both the EU and globalization as threats to it, sometimes separately, sometimes together. The French had been deeply shaken by the Bolkestein Directive and the opening of negotiations with Turkey. In the Netherlands, the so-called Polder (or Dutch) Model was a rare Eurozone economic success story. But it was in downturn, and the Dutch had been deeply disoriented about the place of immigration in their society. They were also worried that the ECT’s institutional changes might lead to too much power for the larger member states.

Economics, for Better or Worse?

There are few political systems whose recent economic history is as tumultuous as the EU’s. It was not surprising therefore, that many of our respondents chose to frame their answers to our queries about the reasons for the tumult by talking about economics. In their lists of EU successes over the past two decades they invariably began with the economic innovations made during the Delors Commissions. They told a common story, one in which one quarter of respondents had themselves been active participants. It merits, therefore, a preliminary summary here.

Bringing the People with Us

There are few people familiar with the EU, and even fewer EU citizens who are not aware that the EU‘s institutions have problems of legitimacy. Put simply, the EU’s people do not know much about it and often do not much like what they do know. At their origins, these problems are architectural. EU institutions were purpose-built to help six Western European nation states cooperate after a terrible war. Some of those among the architects were strong idealists who hoped that the new institutions would lead to something like a United States of Europe by dissolving national differences into a federalist whole. Most of the founders were realists, however, and they knew that making such a federalist whole a transparent goal was likely to ensure failure. The overriding importance of generating international cooperation in Europe — nothing less than a peaceful future was at stake — thus led the founders to a path of sectoral integration that aimed at removing economic barriers among member states.

Enlargement: Triumphs and Trials

That a EU that began with six Western European countries in 1957 had 27 members and covered most of the European continent by 2007 bears strong witness to the triumph of integration. Practically everyone conventionally labeled European, except the Norwegians, the Swiss, and the western Balkan states of the ex-Yugoslavia, has joined the EU.1 It was no accident, therefore, that most respondents argued that enlargement should be on the list of the EU’s great successes, right after the single market and EMU.

European Elites and the Union’s Crises: An Analytic Summary

One could claim that EU has been in continuing crisis throughout much of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Therefore, it is important to understand what our European elites really did say about this crisis between 2005 and 2007. This is not an easy task. They were far from united on their general analyses or the detail they offered in support of them. In itself, this was ample proof that if there is a ‘Brussels bureaucracy,’ it is very far the united phalanx that some portray. Why this is the case is not difficult to discern. Our respondents sat in very different institutional positions and they worked within an institutional division of labor. In addition, they came from different national and political backgrounds, despite all being ‘European.’1 Finally, for most of them their jobs involved being part of a collective intellectual and as is well-known intellectuals, individual and collective, are an argumentative lot. Our respondents were no different. Even if bound to exhibit discretion by their institutional positions and professional duties, their disagreements were part of process of debate and dispute that contributes to defining Europe’s interests and goals. Despite such variety, however, larger themes shone through the differences.

Flight of the Member States

Not far beneath considerations of the fifth enlargement was a basic, almost mathematical, anxiety. Enlargement had already created bouts of EU indigestion, was an important element in contemporary troubles, and would leave difficult legacies. The more EU members there were, the more complicated it became for them to reach agreement. Enlargement meant slower and more convoluted processes for reaching any agreement that might be possible, deals of lower quality when deals could be made at all, and, more generally, less momentum toward integration. Moreover, these problems were likely to persist even if the institutional reforms proposed in the European Constitutional Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty were implemented. The more members the EU had, the more different and diverse national interests were, and the more complicated it was to reconcile them.

Trials by Fire: The EU and Its Crises

European integration has never been a simple process. The new Europe has become even more difficult recently, however. Member states disagree with each other on almost everything that matters. National leaders now routinely blame the EU for problems that they cannot resolve at home, even after they have willingly signed up to European policies meant to confront these very same problems. This blame avoidance also reflects citizenries divided about European integration, often along lines of social class. In its brief history European integration has attracted support and allegiance from social groups who have perceived benefits from it. Others, however, have often lined up to defend their country and national identities against what they perceive to be negative incursions from the EU. Experts debate the meaning of these divisions. The term ‘Euroclash’, recently chosen by an optimistic observer, summarizes the debate.3

The Great Recession as Reality Test

As we ended the main part of our interviewing a new shadow darkened the EU’s skies, announced first by housing bubbles, ‘exuberant’ stock markets, and growing global economic imbalances. In 2008, these skies opened up onto the largest economic disaster since the Great Depression. On top of the numerous and overlapping crises our respondents had discussed, the EU now faced treacherous new international economic conditions.