The past years have seen numerous crises from the 2007-2008 financial crisis to the migration crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. These crises have significantly impacted EU policy in numerous areas including the Economic and Monetary Union, financial regulation and supervision, health policy, state aid control, energy policy, migration policy, and foreign and defence policy. As a result of these crises, EU rule-making has developed in various ways. Some developments have had an institutional dimension in that they concerned the actors involved in rule-making, as exemplified in the introduction of instruction rights of EU bodies vis-à-vis national authorities or the introduction of reverse (qualified) majority voting in the Council. But they also concerned the shape or nature of rules, where we have seen the increasing use of Regulations (as opposed to Directives) and of soft law instead of legally binding rules. The substance of existing rules was also reconsidered, resulting, for instance, in the deviation in practice from the Dublin system as regards the distribution of refugees, in the EU indebting itself on a considerable scale in the wake of the pandemic, and in the boosting of foreign and defence policies as a result of the war in Ukraine. EU Regulatory Responses to Crises examines and compares these developments from a legal and a political science perspective. It analyses the measures taken, successful or not, to save banks, to ensure a fair distribution of migrants across EU Member States, or to support the acquisition of vaccines, for example. This book draws a comprehensive picture of the EU's regulatory toolkit in times of crisis, and its enrichment and refinement in reaction to new challenges.

EU Regulatory Responses to Crises: Adaptation or Transformation?

Héritier, Adrienne

Fromage, Diane

Weismann, Paul

Foreign & International Law

Oxford University Press

This book discusses the change of five important institutional rules of decision-making in the European Union and proposes a general explanation of long-term institutional change which is also applicable for the change of decision-making rules beyond Europe.

Explaining Institutional Change in Europe

History

Europe

With each legislative issue, legislators have to decide whether to delegate decision-making to the executive and/or to expert bodies in order to flesh out the details of this legislation, or, alternatively, to spell out all aspects of this decision in legislation proper. The reasons why to delegate have been of prime interest to political science. The debate has concentrated on principal-agent theory to explain why politicians delegate decision-making to bureaucrats, to independent regulatory agencies, and to others actors and how to control these agents. By contrast, Changing Rules of Delegation focuses on these questions: Which actors are empowered by delegation? Are executive actors empowered over legislative actors? How do legislative actors react to the loss of power? What opportunities are there to change the institutional rules governing delegation in order to (re)gain institutional power and, with it influence over policy outcomes? The authors analyze the conditions and processes of change of the rules that delegate decision-making power to the Commission's implementing powers under comitology. Focusing on the role of the European Parliament the authors explain why the Commission, the Council, and increasingly the Parliament, delegated decision-making to the Commission. If they chose delegation, they still have to determine under which institutional rule comitology should operate. These rules, too, distribute power unequally among actors and therefore raise the question of how they came about in the first place and whether and how the "losers" of a rule change seek to alter the rules at a later point in time.

Changing Rules of Delegation: A Contest for Power in Comitology

Bergström, Carl Fredrik

Moury, Catherine

Bischoff, Carina S.

Law Practice

Policy-Making and Diversity in Europe: Escape from Deadlock (Theories of Institutional Design)

Policy-Making and Diversity in Europe examines the European Union and its policy-making processes. In particular, it asks how an institution that is so riddled with veto points manages to be such an active policy maker. Héritier argues that the diversity of actors' interests and the need for consensus in European institutions would almost inevitably lead to deadlock, were it not for the existence of creative informal strategies and policy-making patterns. Termed by the author "subterfuge," these strategies prevent political impasses and "make Europe work."

Business & Money

Economics

Cambridge University Press

Differential Europe: The European Union Impact on National Policymaking (Governance in Europe Series)

Europe matters, but in different ways in different countries. The European Union affects the policy fabric of all member states, but that impact is differential rather than convergent. In some instances, new policy goals have been added to national agendas and fresh policy instruments are applied, while old ones become less important or are openly challenged. In other instances, when European and national policy objectives are concurrent, national practices may be reinforced, or even redirected, by EU policies. In all instances, however, state actors reconsider national policy practices wherever the EU extends it activities. This innovative study solves the differential puzzle by developing a sophisticated theoretical and conceptual framework for studying the impact of European policies on member states. Focusing especially on transport policy, the authors employ extensive interviews and archival research in an empirically rich set of case studies (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands) to demonstrate convincingly that this influence depends on pre-existing policies and institutional capacity to change. Depending on the particular phase of regulation in which a country finds itself and on its institutional flexibility, an identical EU policy has remarkably diverse impacts within individual member states.The authors' research points to fascinating counterintuitive results and a new general model that will have implications for anyone studying policymaking in Europe.

Politics & Social Sciences

Knill, Christoph

Kerwer, Dieter

Lehmkuhl, Dirk

Teutsch, Michael

Social Sciences

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

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