Community method

Abstract: The European Union's (EU's) responses to the economic and financial crisis provided a vigorous illustration for how the role of the Union's 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.

Abstract: Introduction 1 From Community to Diverse Union 2 Integration and Democracy: The Big Trade-Off 3 The Community Method 4 Delegation of Powers and the Fiduciary Principle 5 Institutional Balance Versus Institutional Innovation 6 Policy Dilemmas 7 Positive and Negative Integration 8 Beyond Intergovernmentalism 9 International Economic Integration, The Nation-State, and Democracy: An Impossible Trinity? 10 The Future of the Union: Montesquieu Versus Madison

Abstract: The twenty years since the signing of the Maastricht Treaty have been marked by an integration paradox: although the scope of European Union (EU) activity has increased at an unprecedented pace, this increase has largely taken place in the absence of significant new transfers of power to supranational institutions along traditional lines. Conventional theories of European integration struggle to explain this paradox because they equate integration with the empowerment of specific supranational institutions under the traditional Community method. New governance scholars, meanwhile, have not filled this intellectual void, preferring instead to focus on specific deviations from the Community method rather than theorizing about the evolving nature of the European project. The New Intergovernmentalism challenges established assumptions about how member states behave, what supranational institutions want, and where the dividing line between high and low politics is located, and develops a new theoretical framework known as the new intergovernmentalism. The fifteen chapters in this volume by leading political scientists, political economists, and legal scholars explore the scope and limits of the new intergovernmentalism as a theory of post-Maastricht integration and draw conclusions about the profound state of political disequilibrium in which the EU operates. This book is of relevance to EU specialists seeking new ways of thinking about European integration and policy-making, and general readers who wish to understand what has happened to the EU in the two troubled decades since 1992.

Abstract: Faludi A. (2006) From European spatial development to territorial cohesion policy, Regional Studies 40, 667–678. The European Constitution defines territorial cohesion as a competence shared between the Union and the Member States. What does this stand for, and how is territorial cohesion policy going to take shape? Answering these questions, the paper deals with the European Spatial Development Perspective's advocacy of polycentrism and how territorial cohesion has given new impetus to pursuing this agenda. It also deals with French roots of territorial cohesion thinking and French endorsement of the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC). Based on recent Communications, the paper shows that the European Commission intends territorial cohesion policy to take shape following not OMC but the ‘Community Method’. However, it is argued that Member State involvement in its formulation following OMC is essential. Faludi A. (2006) Du developpement geographique europeen a la politique territoriale en faveur de la coh...