Uwe Puetter

The New Intergovernmentalism: European Integration in the Post‐Maastricht Era

The post-Maastricht period is marked by an integration paradox. While the basic constitutional features of the European Union have remained stable, EU activity has expanded to an unprecedented degree. This form of integration without supranationalism is no exception or temporary deviation from traditional forms of European integration. Rather, it is a distinct phase of European integration, what is called ‘the new intergovernmentalism’ in this article. This approach to post-Maastricht integration challenges theories that associate integration with transfers of competences from national capitals to supranational institutions and those that reduce integration to traditional socioeconomic or security-driven interests. This article explains the integration paradox in terms of transformations in Europes political economy, changes in preference formation and the decline of the ‘permissive consensus’. It presents a set of six hypotheses that develop further the main claims of the new intergovernmentalism and that can be used as a basis for future research.

Europe's deliberative intergovernmentalism: the role of the Council and European Council in EU economic governance

The European Unions (EUs) responses to the economic and financial crisis provided a vigorous illustration for how the role of the Unions core intergovernmental bodies – the European Council and the Council – has evolved in recent years. The European Council has emerged as the centre of political gravity in the field of economic governance. The Council and the Eurogroup fulfil a crucial role as forums for policy debate. The emphasis on increased high-level intergovernmental policy co-ordination is the reflection of an integration paradox inherent to the post-Maastricht EU. While policy interdependencies have grown, member state governments have resisted the further transfer of formal competences to the EU level and did not follow the model of the Community method. Instead, they aim for greater policy coherence through intensified intergovernmental co-ordination. Given its consensus dependency, this co-ordination system can best be conceptualized as deliberative intergovernmentalism.

Governing informally: the role of the Eurogroup in EMU and the Stability and Growth Pact

Comprising the finance ministers of the euro area, the informal Eurogroup plays a central role in the economic governance set-up, albeit one widely unnoticed in the literature on economic and monetary union (EMU). The group not only pre-agrees all critical Council decisions with relevance for the euro area member states, it also functions as a forum where ministers decide on the overall orientation of economic governance in the euro area and establish common interpretations of EMUs core policy instruments. This might seem surprising given that the group is not mentioned by the Treaty and does not have any formal decision-making competences.This article responds to the lack of more detailed empirical information on the functioning of the Eurogroup. In theoretical terms the analysis is based on legal approaches to EU comitology, the literature on policy learning and research on the role of arguing and deliberation in international negotiations. The main argument is that the Eurogroups informal working method creates a negotiation environment which is particularly suited for the conduct of a close policy dialogue among the euro areas key decision-makers. This dialogue supplements EMUs formal co-ordination instruments - the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines and the Stability and Growth Pact. The Eurogroups emphasis on consensus formation through informal discussion is of particular importance in EMUs decentralized policy framework which lacks any significant concentration of political authority at the supranational level and relies on the voluntary commitment of individual member states to commonly agreed policy objectives.

Accommodating Normative Divergence in European Foreign Policy Co-Ordination: The Example of the Iraq Crisis

In situations of international crises normative divergence regarding policy responses is a recurrent phenomenon. It is a problem which remains to be addressed despite assumptions about internationally established communities such as the liberal community of Western states. The case of the European Unions failure to co-ordinate a common policy response in connection with the war on Iraq demonstrates that conflict between Member States about appropriate common policy responses is enhanced by external crises. Common commitment to shared community norms is hence considered as an insufficient basis for policy consensus or, for that matter, sustainable compromise. The article discusses how and why these divergences emerge and suggests institutionalizing collective processes of norm contestation at the European level.

Integration without supranationalisation: studying the lead roles of the European Council and the Council in post-Lisbon EU politics

Abstract This special issue follows up on a stream of recent contributions on what has been identified as a particular phase of post-Maastricht European integration: the ‘new intergovernmentalism’ and ‘the intergovernmental union’. This literature considers the European Union’s (EU) core intergovernmental forums for policy coordination, the European Council, the Eurogroup and the Foreign Affairs Council as central to EU decision-making. These bodies perform functions related to policy initiation and implementation which were traditionally associated with the European Commission. Intergovernmentalisation is primarily detectable in new areas of EU activity such as economic governance and foreign affairs which operate mainly outside the community method and in policy sectors which depict a mix of legislative and non-legislative decision-making mechanisms, such as justice and home affairs and energy. More integration is achieved without significant further supranationalisation. These developments affect how the Union’s main decision bodies operate and how interinstitutional relations are structured.

Consistency and diversity? The EU's rotating trio Council Presidency after the Lisbon Treaty

The Lisbon Treaty introduced significant changes to the Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU). The new Treaty combines a permanent chair with the principle of rotation based on three member states collaborating during an 18-month period, without specifying the responsibilities of trio groups. This left wide scope for the first post-Lisbon trio to establish new working mechanisms. By discussing the joint Presidency of Spain, Belgium and Hungary, this article interprets the trio model and its combination with the permanent chair model as an attempt to re-adjust the balance between consistency and diversity. Rotation remains a key instrument for ensuring the representation of the diversity of member states in an enlarged Union. At the same time, the EUs ever more complex policy agenda and a greater need for collective leadership motivate the search for new forms of co-operation to enhance policy consistency over consecutive Presidency terms.

Intervening from outside: the role of EU finance ministers in the constitutional politics

ABSTRACT The Convention paid particular attention to the review of the institutional framework of European economic governance and created a separate working group for this policy area. Despite strong lobbying by the Commission and backing from a large number of members of the Convention, the Draft Treaty did not contain any significant increase of the Commissions competences in this area. This article explains the outcome of the Conventions review of economic governance by looking at the particular role that European Union finance ministers played in the process. It traces the interventions by the ministers, which remained largely hidden from public attention, and discusses the implications for the Conventions functioning as a particular model for treaty reform. However, the article cautions against seeing the interventions by finance ministers simply as another indication of the strong role of national governments in the constitutional politics.

Deciding on the European Semester: the European Council, the Council and the enduring asymmetry between economic and social policy issues

ABSTRACT This contribution investigates the asymmetrical relationship between economic and social aspects under the European Semester by looking at the roles of the European Council and the Council between 2010 and 2016. Drawing on the theories of deliberative and new intergovernmentalism, this asymmetry is associated with an uneven evolution of the co-ordination infrastructure, notably the varying degree to which key policy issues are subject to informal policy dialogue. Not only are finance ministers better placed to conduct policy dialogue, they also control the European Semester policy priorities more effectively than their colleagues in the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council (EPSCO). Finance ministers also are more closely linked to discussions at the highest political level, the European Council. Social affairs committees and the Commission managed to gain a greater role at the expert level and to integrate more social issues into policy recommendations. Yet, these successes are not matched by higher level political endorsement.

Catalysts of integration – the role of core intergovernmental forums in EU politics

Abstract This article synthetises the contributions of the special issue along three major lines of reasoning. First, the European Council is considered as a catalyst of post-Maastricht integration. This is mainly due to its policy-making role in core new areas of European Union (EU) activity. Second, inter-institutional relations that have emerged between the European Council, the Council, the Commission and the European Parliament in the post-Maastricht era and in particular the post-Lisbon era are seen to reflect both the centrality of the European Council and a novel way of initiating and implementing EU policy. Finally, the political process within and around the European Council is considered that has taken place against the background of the most recent crises conditions. In particular, the simultaneous occurrence of consensus and domination is identified as a key element of further research related to the ‘new intergovernmentalism’ and the ‘intergovernmental union’.

The centrality of consensus and Deliberation in Contemporary EU Politics and the new intergovernmentalism

Abstract This article builds on the analysis of institutional change in the European Union as projected by two closely related approaches: deliberative and new intergovernmentalism. Consensus and deliberation play a pivotal role within these perspectives. The two concepts are seen as key for understanding institutional change within the European Council and Council environment. Euro crisis decision-making, which by several authors is seen as evidence of either hard intergovernmental bargaining or as a transformation of consensus politics into domination, thus may undermine a core assumption of the new intergovernmentalism. Even though persisting asymmetries between creditor and debtor countries and dominance on part of one or a small number of powerful member states are understood as a threat to consensus politics, the euro crisis is not seen to have fundamentally changed the overall role of consensus and deliberation as a defining feature of the post-Maastricht era.