Peter Bursens

Why Denmark and Belgium Have Different Implementation Records: On Transposition Laggards and Leaders in the EU

Statistics of the European Commission show different performances among member states regarding the implementation of European policies. In particular, this article explains why Denmark and Belgium have different records with respect to the legal or administrative transposition of European Union environmental directives. The article starts with a short overview of the implementation problematique and a presentation of the latest available statistics. Then European-level factors are ruled out as possible explanations for the differences in performance. The author argues, on the contrary, that the differences between Belgium and Denmark must be explained by national institutional contexts. To this end, an institutional approach is presented, which draws attention to ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ institutions as explanatory variables. In total seven categories of variables are discussed: four ‘hard’ categories – the constitutional and administrative context (division of competencies and coordination mechanisms), institutional capacity, administrative and legal adaptation pressure, communication and continuity – and three ‘soft’ categories – institutional jealousy, Europeanisation and political adaptation pressure. It was found that both member states under study have different scores on almost all variables, pointing to rather unfavourable implementation conditions for Belgium and much more favourable conditions for Denmark.

The European rescue of the federal state: how Europeanisation shapes the Belgian state

This article investigates the impact of European integration on the Belgian federal polity. In particular, we substantiate two propositions. First, we show that European integration stimulates Regions, Communities and central government to cooperate. Second, Europe prevents the central government level from disappearing. Europeanisation seems to have a centralising effect on some parts of the Belgian polity. In general, the constitutionally dual nature of the Belgian federation has, due to European influences, incrementally evolved into a practice of cooperation and joint decision-making. These conclusions are supported by an in-depth exploration of five policy areas: the overall domestic European coordination procedures, environmental policy, agricultural policy, social policy and the European treaty negotiations.

Europeanization of Subnational Polities: the Impact of Domestic Factors on Regional Adaptation to European Integration

Abstract This paper considers how subnational entities adapt under the pressure of European integration. In particular, the article looks at whether the combined institutional mechanisms of goodness-of-fit and mediating domestic factors offer sufficient understanding of adaptational behaviour by regions of member states. Empirical data come from the transposition of an environmental directive and an agriculture regulation in Flanders. It is argued that formal institutions and resources, on the one hand, and norm entrepreneurs and issue salience, on the other, pop up as crucial domestic variables to explain regional adaptation to European integration, meaning that variables from both rational choice and sociological institutionalism offer explanations for the Europeanization of regional entities.

How Europe Shapes the Nature of the Belgian Federation: Differentiated EU Impact Triggers Both Co-operation and Decentralization

This paper disentangles the impact of various dimensions of European integration on different aspects of the Belgian federal polity. We discern two opposite trends. While the institutional embeddedness of Belgium as an EU member state results in domestic centralizing tendencies and co-operative political practices, economic integration stimulates political pressures for regional autonomy, contributing to further divergence and hollowing out of the federal level. We conclude by arguing that the EU clearly affects territorial politics in Belgium, but, as the European causes are multidimensional, that also the effects, albeit substantial, will be diverse.

Environmental interest representation in Belgium and the EU: professionalisation and division of labour within a multi-level governance setting

Starting from the assumption that institutional changes have an impact on the structure and strategies of environmental interest groups, this article, first, compares the Belgian and European interest representation configurations and, second, examines whether the integration process has changed the Belgian configuration. Regarding the former, little differences are found, although the Belgian configuration shows relatively more internal involvement of environmental interest groups in the respective policy‐making process. Regarding the latter, Belgian environmental interest groups are more subject to Belgian state reforms than to the European integration process. This results in an arrangement in which a division of labour is set up among highly professionalised actors in a multi‐level governance system.

Assessing EU Simulations: Evidence from the Trans-Atlantic EuroSim

Simulations have become popular teaching tools in political science curricula. In particular, European Studies programs have often been complemented with all kinds of simulation exercises. Proponents argue that simulations have several advantages as teaching tools. This paper investigates pedagogical literature and presents a framework to assess the added value of simulations in European Studies programs. More specifically, the paper evaluates the use of simulations as powerful learning environments and as a way to increase affective learning among political science students. It presents the example of EuroSim, a yearly extended simulation, organized by the Trans-Atlantic Consortium for European Union Studies and Simulations (TACEUSS) by assessing the organization of the event and by using data from pre- and post-simulation surveys among student participants.

You'll Never Lobby Alone. Explaining the Participation of Sub-national Authorities in the European Commission's Open Consultations

The multi-level system of the EU (European Union) constrains the institutionalized representation of the regional tier of government. Consequently, SNAs (sub-national authorities) seek to represent their interests through various lobbying practices, including taking part in the European Commissions open consultations. In this article, we argue that varying levels with which SNAs take part in open consultations cannot be adequately explained by regional-level conditions such as resources or autonomy. Instead, we hypothesize that the specific policy context strongly affects regional involvement in open consultations. We test our hypotheses with evidence of the participation pattern of 296 SNAs in eight online consultations situated in five policy areas: CAP (Common Agricultural Policy), EAP (Environment Action Programme), Horizon 2020, COH (Cohesion Policy) and TEN-T (Trans-European Network for Transport). Our analysis demonstrates that the probability that SNAs take part in open consultations increases significantly when private interests of the same region and/or other SNAs of the same country participate in the same consultation.

How Multi-level are IGCs? The Belgian Federation and the 2000 Intergovernmental Conference

In day-to-day EU-decision-making member states have to share political power with other – supranational – political actors such as the European Commission and the European Parliament (Hix, 1999), and with private actors through all sorts of informal and institutionalized lobbying channels (Greenwood, 1997). Also regional political entities are able to exert influence when their interests are at stake (Hooghe, 1996). Intergovernmental Conferences (IGCs), on the other hand, are special moments in the history of European integration. It is often accepted that IGC negotiations and the resulting treaty amendments have remained the exclusive playground of the member states. Nevertheless, during the 2000 IGC, many other actors have tried to gain influence in the negotiating process. First, European institutions themselves have been formally involved. Article 48 of the Treaty on the European Union for instance requires consultations of the European Parliament and the European Commission before an IGC can be convened. During the negotiations – both on the ministerial level and on the preparatory level – the Commission attended the meetings and took part in the deliberations. Two senior Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) attended the meetings of the government representatives as observers and they were joined by the President of the Parliament during ministerial meetings. Also at the European Council meetings several discussions took place with the President of the Parliament. Still, in spite of the scope of these debates or the quality of the submitted position papers, formal decision-making remained solely with the governments of the member states through the Council of Ministers and, ultimately, the European Council. However, some authors argue that these supranational institutions – in spite of their formal absence in the decisive moments – have been able to exert influence on the final outcomes through processes of learning, socialization and institutionalization of policy paradigms (Falkner, 2002a: 1). Second, other actors were also interested in the IGC

Domestic European Union Coordination and Interest Group Mobilization in Three Member States: Looking Beyond the Formal Mechanisms

Abstract One conclusion in the literature on domestic European Union (EU) coordination is that the formal institutional properties of countries—devolved versus centralized or unitary—affect the nature of coordination practices. Basically, the view has emerged that domestic coordination is a largely bureaucratic process in which political control mechanisms remain relatively weak. Instead of only looking at public authorities and their formal networks, this article relies on a data set that allows us to analyse informal political-administrative networks and look at how societal interests mobilize and target policymakers in order to shape the position governments defend at the EU level. One of our conclusions is that despite devolution in Belgium, its intergovernmental coordination shows a considerable level of network centralization, even when compared to unitary countries such as France and the Netherlands, meaning that there are large differences between the three states with respect to the connectedness of the actors involved.

Choosing channels. Intra-state and extra-state strategies of Belgian subnational authorities in response to the European Semester

ABSTRACT Europeanization literature has found that, in general, subnational authorities prefer to target the EU indirectly via member state channels. This article tests whether these findings hold in the non-legislative domain of the European Semester. With respect to the Belgian case, the article concludes that all Belgian subnational authorities indeed primarily use the cooperative intra-state channels as a response to the domestic division of competences and the EU decision-making procedures. It also finds that in addition especially Flanders invests substantially in extra-state strategies towards EU institutions. The article concludes that stronger time constraints, lower compliance pressure and the more politically salient issues of the European Semester trigger the most prosperous and identity prone region to adopt additional extra-state channels on top of the dominant intra-state channels.