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Huge expansion in the number of areas in which the EC is active |
Summing up it can be said that we have been left with a very non-uniform, indeed, confusing picture following our look at the first four stages of development: On the one hand we have been able to note a huge expansion in the number of areas in which the EC is active within the Union. The illustration clearly demonstrates that hardly any areas remain in which the EU is not active in some way or another. Monetary Union represents a project that reaches deep - on a scale previously unknown - into the heart of national
sovereignty.
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The dominance of intergovernmental cooperation in pillars 2 and 3 |
Yet this strong movement toward supranationalization within the EC pillar is set against a dominance of cooperation at a government-to-government level in the other two pillars, as well as being set against the fact that not all member states participate in cooperation at all in some areas; what we are dealing with here, then, is graduated Integration. Indeed, that changes to the Treaty might be needed soon set against this background was clearly something of which the authors of the Treaty were aware given that they included a provision in article N, paragraph 2 which stated that another intergovernmental conference should be convened in 1996 to examine certain provisions of the Treaty.
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Interim appraisal |
This brings us to the end of Basic Course 2 and the first part of our look at the history of the EU, It is now time to make a brief assessment with regards to our core guiding questions. To recap: We had decided to pay special attention to any questions arriving out of our look at the history of the integration process, to examine whether any clear determining factors - obstacles as well as driving forces - could be determined and to draw any possible conclusions
vis-à-vis an assessment of the EU and its further development.
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Question
Why did development progress from sectorially limited to comprehensive cooperation? |
One of the fundamental questions, that almost begs to be answered is surely the question as to how - despite massive resistance in some instances - such impressive development from sectorial to comprehensive cooperation was achieved. Only one sector had been communitized as part of the ECSC, coal and steel. In reality the EEC also encompassed very few communitized areas at the outset such as customs union, common market, foreign trade and agricultural policy. The SEA ushered in huge expansion of the Community's common areas of activity (environment, research and technology policy etc.) Since the Treaty on European Union came into force nearly all fields of politics are now a part of cooperation in some form or other.
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Why was cooperation structured differently in different areas? |
This observation leads us straight onto a second question. Just why has cooperation been structured and organised so differently across all these areas? For instance, some areas such as Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and cooperation in justice and domestic policy were deliberately separated from the EC by member states. These areas have retained unanimous voting procedures and are dominated by more traditional forms of intergovernmental cooperation. But even within the EC pillar itself, a multitude of differences exists depending on which field of politics one is looking at; a good example here is the decision-making procedure (unanimous voting vs. qualified majority voting, but also the codecision procedure which provides the European Parliament with slight to pivotal influencing powers).
Expressed in a more abstract way: The co-existence of supranational and intergovernmental elements are conspicuous and in need of explanation. Just think about the Luxembourg Compromise, which strengthened the role played by member states and intergovernmental elements and compare it with the way in which the treaties were constitutionalized at the same time by the ECJ, which led to supranationalization. Or consider the three pillars making up the Treaty on European Union which provide a vivid example of the coexistence between supranational and intergovernmental elements.
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Determinants |
Given that around ten years of dynamic development, which we will be addressing during Basic Course 3, remain to be taken into account, it is hardly possible for this assessment to investigate the determining factors of the integration process systematically and provide a conclusive statement. Having said this, however, our journey though an integration process lasting for four decades has highlighted certain factors that will clearly help us in answering some of the fundamental questions posed at the beginning. To this end, I would like to mention two aspects in this context.
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Spill-over |
We asked ourselves how this huge expansion of cooperation into an increasing number of areas had come about. One of the major factors in this regard would seem to be the fact that cooperation in one area of policy creates functional pressure to incorporate other areas of politics into this cooperation. Often referred to as spill over in the field of integration research, this phenomenon was particularly noticeable during the internal market program, which, in turn, had massive consequences for monetary union and cooperation in the field of justice and home affairs. Indeed, this was always one of the Commission's main arguments in its successful policy to convince member states to start down the ambitious road toward monetary union.
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Different notions about how cooperation should be structured |
A second example is formed by the coexistence of supranational and intergovernmental elements in areas such as foreign affairs, which can only be described as unusual and detrimental to effective action; the community is responsible for foreign trade policy and is organized supranationally, while foreign and security policy is organized more traditionally at an intergovernmental, second-pillar level. Having come across it on several occasions during Basic Course 2, could a major factor here be the way which member states have fundamentally different ideas about cooperation in numerous policy areas and on many individual questions, especially in regard to the negotiations effecting treaty change - just think about countries like Great Britain and Denmark on the one side and others such as Germany and Italy on the other? If this was the case, then action would indeed be functionally constrained and progress only made at the lowest level of common agreement and, over time, this would almost inevitably lead to a multitude of cooperation types and decision-making procedures such as the ones that we have looked at following the Treaty on European Union (Treaty of Maastricht) for the newly created European Union. As it happens, there are a whole host of reasons for believing that we might be dealing with a characteristic development pattern of the integration process.
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Summary of Basic Course 2 |
This brings us to the end of our example-based and intentionally brief assessment of European integration up until the creation of the EU. I hope that it has gone some way to demonstrating the great interest and potential to be had out of an analytically led investigation of this subject. Along with information about the period, this assessment will also form the heart of the next Basic Course (3) which will be addressing the years between 1993 and 2005 and the developments that have been taking place since the coming into force of the Treaty of Maastricht. Basic course 2 finishes with an overview illustration of the findings we have made so far.
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