Student Name: Ozgur Taylan CEBECI

Lecturer Name: MAJOROS István

THE QUESTIONS OF THE EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

Introduction

Debates about European integration often comment on the challenge this process poses
to the sovereignty of European nation states, but less frequently note that post-war
immigration to Europe has challenged the primacy of the nation state in Europe along many
similar lines. As with European integration, the individual nation state’s unambiguous control
over territorially defined policy-making, population movement and citizenship has in recent
years been compromised by the continued flow of new and increasingly diverse migrants to the
continent. This paper explores the degree to which these two phenomena are interlinked: the
ways in which European integration has led to the development of European Union (EU)
competencies for free movement, immigration and asylum, that in turn may be inducing
specifically transnational political action over migration-related issues.

“We decide on something, make it known and wait a while to see what happens. If there
is no hue and cry and nobody kicks up a stink, because most people have no idea what the
decision is all about anyway, then we move forwards step by step until there’s no turning back”.
This modern interpretation of the Monnet method – formulated in drastic fashion by
Luxemburg’s Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker (Spiegel No. 52, 1999, p. 136) – became
outdated in 2004/2005. The ten-country enlargement and the rejection of the Constitution in
referenda in France and the Netherlands marked the end of “permissive consensus” in Europe
on the future of European integration. Enlargement and transfer of sovereignty to the EU have
thus come much more to the fore as issues of social conflict and (national) political debate.

The EU’s Main Stages of Development

The debate on the future of Europe cannot turn the clock back. We are not talking now
about short-term strategic advantages for individual Member States or engaging in a
philosophical debate on the meaning, purpose and finality of the Community, but about solving
real problems in a world with new international power structures, for which the sphere of
influence and the regulatory jurisdiction of European nation-states will prove inadequate in the
future.

Hence the EU is also an expression of a structural transformation of the state, which will
be obliged to fulfil duties with a more pronounced trans-national dimension in the future. We
are witness to a form of statehood in transition, in the course of which the nation-state has
forfeited its potential to act, enabling new forms of intergovernmental and inter-societal action
to emerge. The EU can therefore no longer be measured merely in terms of categories that
apply to nation-states. For long-standing observers such as journalist Gunter Hofmann, it is a
structure that is neither a nation nor a Europe of native countries nor a federation, but rather a
network of interlacing mechanisms for cooperation and compromise at many levels.

The question of these effects is at the heart of the research which focuses on the
Europeanisation of national political systems, a research agenda with has flourished in recent
years. European integration becomes the independent variable with influences the politics of
the Member States – a perspective that is exactly the inverse of traditional integration research.
Essentially, the term “Europeanisation” is used to signify the transformation of a variable at the
national level which adapts to a European model, logic or constraint.(1) Since most authors use
the term only as a vague concept guiding their empirical investigation, a recurring discussion
revolves around the ambiguous utilisation of the meaning of “Europeanisation” and the great
diversity of studies which all claim to deal with the topic.

As in the studies of Europeanisation, the object which we would like to focus on is – very
generally speaking – the effect of European integration. Contrary to the dominant strand of
literature, however, we would like to insist on two dimensions in particular: the role of actors in
the concrete translation of these effects and the motives of action that can be identified. These
two aspects seem so far underdeveloped in the current discussions, which have a tendency to
focus on structural elements and institutional pressures with less attention to the mechanisms
through which these induce change.
 The Interplay of Deeper Integration And Wider Membership

The Single European Act of 1987 set a process in motion which increasingly delegated
areas of national responsibility to the European Communities and later to the European Union.
The central landmarks in this process were the Treaties of Maastricht (1993), Amsterdam (1999)
and Nice (2003), as well as the negotiated, though as yet unratified European Constitution. The
quick succession of treaties reflects the great need to reform and adapt the EU’s institutional
structure, which always has (had) to be adapted to new internal and external circumstances,
such as the number of Member States, institutional bottlenecks or a changing international
context.

The EU’s central achievements are still economic ones. The completion of the European
Single Market in 1993, which was rigorously pursued and led to the introduction of a single
currency for 300 million Europeans in 2002, is the most visible aspect of economic integration.
In its Lisbon Strategy the EU set itself the target of becoming the most competitive and dynamic
economic area in the world by 2010. This strategy was designed to boost innovation, advance
the knowledge-based society and enhance social cohesion and environmental awareness. While
the Euro can be regarded as an overall success, although public opinion would beg to differ, an
increasing inconsistency can be observed between European monetary policy and the economic
policies pursued by the Member States, which have remained national in character. Until now
there has been no consensus in Europe in favour of an integration of macroeconomic
instruments that might European cooperation in the areas of justice and home affairs has
become increasingly important since the Treaty of Amsterdam.

The most visible change has been the incorporation of the Schengen agreement in the
Union’s acquis and the resulting abolition of identity checks at borders within Europe. Linked to
this are rules on checks at external borders, on entering the Schengen area, and the common
Schengen visa. Further steps making deep inroads into Member States’ sovereignty have been
the creation of Europol and Eurojust - European authorities for police and judicial cooperation.
Although these institutions are not comparable to their American counterparts, they are
designed to improve cooperation between Member States in combating organised crime and
terrorism. The remit of both bodies mainly relates to the exchange of information between
Member States, which explains why governments are reluctant to cede these policy areas to the
European Union. The same reservations are also to be seen in asylum and immigration policy,
an issue on which the German government has stuck to the principle of unanimity, thus slowing
down integration for the time being.

Institutionalising European Integration

To understand why only certain forms of transnational mobilisation are successful at EU

level, it is necessary to explain mobilisation opportunities by reference to the specific legal,
political and institutional structures and dynamics of European institutions. This takes us back to
considering how mainstream EU studies conceptualize European integration. Throughout its
history, the study of European integration has been characterised by a macro-level IR dispute
between positions that are locked into the same meta-theoretical rationalist paradigm.

The essence of the dispute is between state-centred intergovernmentalism and

supranationally-oriented “neo-functionalist” approaches; but to ask whether it is the member
states or supranational institutions that are in charge is actually likely to elicit the response:
“both, sometimes. European integration has, on the one hand, been advanced at supranational
level by the technocratic ethos of the European Commission, with its key role as policy proposer
and implementer. The European Court of Justice which enforces adherence to Treaty
agreements -and hence the body of European Community law - has actively carved out its role
as a supranational overlord to national level legislation. Integration thus establishes scope for
constitutionalisation - characterised by IR scholars as the “domestification of international
politics” - which involve the transformation of Treaties between states into laws that bind those
states. Supranational laws establish a triangular relationship between EU citizens, the member
states and the EU that empowers individuals and constrains the discretion and competence of
member states. In turn, this generates an institutionalizing dynamic, which establishes sources
of power, authority and capacity to act at EU level and may induce certain new forms of interest
group activity and mobilisation at the Europe level among specific groups able to engage with
and use these new European resources. At the same time, the member states have always
exhibited caution about the extent of supranational authority, which means that legislative
power resides with the Council of Ministers, upon which national governments are represented,
and not the relatively weak European Parliament. A strong intergovernmental counterbalance
to supranationalism has thus always sat at the heart of European integration. This creates a
blurred and fluid context, with different balances struck in different policy sectors. Only a
careful examination of the interaction between these structures and the agency of actors
working within them allows accurate assessment of actual political opportunities created at EU
level.

Process vs. Outcomes - Evaluating the Benefits and Costs of European Integration

The first lesson to be learned from the crisis of monetary union is the importance of
distinguishing between two basic criteria used to evaluate any activity, including policymaking:
by process and/or by results. Obvious and significant as this distinction is, it is seldom clearly
made, either in teaching or in research about European integration. Hence it is seldom pointed
out, or perhaps even noticed, that decisions and policymaking at the European level have
always been evaluated primarily in terms of process—institutional developments, volume of
legislation, expansion of competences, scale of operations, decision-making procedures,
“governance”, and so on—rather than by actual results. In the Commission’s White Paper on
European Governance, for example, the good governance principles are largely concerned, not
with the ultimate decision/policy to be adopted, but with the way in which decisions are
reached. The primacy assigned to process has enabled political leaders and Eurocrats, but also
many scholars, to depict European integration as a positive-sum game for everybody concerned.
Thus the 2001 White Paper on governance opens with the apodictic statement that “European
integration has delivered 50 years of stability, peace and economic prosperity. It has helped to
raise standards of living, built an internal market and strengthened the Union’s voice in the
world”. In terms of such concrete outcomes as faster growth, higher productivity, rising
employment levels, or greater technological innovation, however, the picture was then, and still
is today, much less rosy.
 It is this connection between effectiveness, legitimacy, and systemic stability which
makes so worrisome the unsatisfactory economic performance of the last decades, and the
present crisis of the euro zone. Indeed, the basic reason why today public debate and hostile
public reactions have replaced the permissive consensus of the past – when the integration
project was seemingly taken for granted by European voters as part of the political landscape –
is precisely the fact that monetary union has put an end to the primacy of process as the
criterion of policy evaluation on the EU. As long as the permissive consensus lasted, the issue of
the democratic deficit did not arise. The consensus began to erode as the EC enlarged and
acquired more powers, first with the Single European Act and later with the Treaty on European
Union. Indeed, the TEU ratification crisis – which led to the opt-outs of Great Britain and of
Denmark from monetary union – showed that by the early 1990s a permissive consensus no
longer existed. This was the time when the democratic deficit became a serious issue.

Conclusion: Europeanisation vs. Globalisation

The Europeanisation of immigration politics in Europe, potentially contains with it a

fundamental challenge to one of the defining characteristics of the European nation state: its
powers of self-definition and authority over a territorially bounded population. Most European
nation states were built on incorporation and territorial closure through the establishment of
national citizenship; many incorporated immigrants and minorities as part of this process. The
powers of the state - and the institutions of law, democracy, welfare it sustains - were
centralised through this exclusive process of identity formation. Immigration and the integration
of newcomers in the post-war period has previously followed this pattern in most European
nations. All of the above, it would appear, is thrown into question by the establishment of
supranational powers and jurisdiction over immigration questions at the EU level.

However, progress in this area is slow. We have argued that empirically it makes sense
to look for a distinct European “transnational opportunity structure” in the immigration policy
sector only where specific channels and sources of empowerment have begun to be
institutionalised. As yet, these are limited and exclusive to organised élite groups. Within the
strictly delimited picture of EU integration we have offered, what kind of transnational
opportunities remain for a true migrant or minority led mobilisation. Europe should perhaps
prove the most fertile source. However, transnational claims making is as yet more backed up
by other more obvious “transnational structures” than the limited European context.

Behind these opportunities for claims making, there may be a link with universal human
rights and evolving international ideas of personhood. However, the counter argument is that
the emergence of a European free trade zone with completed free movement rights - of the
kind imagined above - would constitute a European “regime” that would cause a direct
deterioration of the international legal regime on rights of persons, particularly in the areas of
protection of asylum seekers and the suppression of statelessness (a potential consequence of
allowing dual nationality and/or rights based on residence alone.

What this underlines ultimately is that European integration is a particular type of

internationalising process: the institution building process of a specifically regional cross-
national cooperative entity. European integration is the political supranationalisation of
sovereignty understood in its contemporary form as the right to exclude, over certain political
powers and a specifically European “geographical” space, and over an uneven range of policy
sectors and law, that is both responding to globalising transnational processes and associated
powers (particularly those led by international capital), while, at the same time, creating new
political and legal institutions which formalize the possibility of transnational action of a
specifically delimited European kind. The essentially ambiguous dynamic of the European
integration process lies here: in that it is caused by globalisation, an attempt to harness
globalisation, and in some sense a campaign against globalisation. This also leaves the EU in a
paradoxical relation with other forms of “transnationalism”, such as the global environment or
human rights movements. As a regional entity - between nation state and united nations -
European institutions and Europeanisation often cut across and/or contradict these
universalising movements and the universalistic norms they are built on.
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