The European Council and European Governance

The Commanding Heights of the EU

François Foret, Yann-Sven Rittelmeyer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415857338
• eBook ISBN: 9781317962342
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In recent years, the failure of the constitutional process, the difficult ratification and implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, as well as the several crises affecting Europe have revitalized the debate on the nature of the European polity and the balance of powers in Brussels. This book explains the redistribution of power in the post-Lisbon EU with a focus on the European Council.

Reform of institutions and the creation of new political functions at the top of the European Union have raised fresh questions about leadership and accountability. This book argues that the European Union exhibits a political order with hierarchies, mechanisms of domination and legitimating narratives. As such, it can be understood by analysing what happens at its summit. Taking the European Council as the nexus of European political governance, contributors consider council and rotating presidencies' co-operation, rivalry and opposition. The book combines approaches through events, processes and political structures, issues and the biographical trajectories of actors and explores how the founding compromise of European integration between sovereignty and supranationality is affected by the evolving nature of this new European political model which aims to combine cooperation and integration.

The European Council and European Governance will be of strong interest to students and scholars of European studies, political science, political sociology, public policy and international relations.

1 Introduction

François Foret and Yann-Sven Rittelmeyer

In recent years, the failure of the constitutional process, the difficult ratification and implementation of the Lisbon Treaty as well as the several crises affecting Europe have revitalized the debate on the nature of the European polity and the balance of powers in Brussels. Reform of institutions and the creation of new political functions at the top of the European Union (EU) have given a fresh momentum to a question which has been pending for several decades: does Europe have a single phone number, or does it still have a phone-book that has to be checked in order to find out who is in charge and accountable? Hopes were expressed about giving faces to the anonymous multilevel governance in order to increase the visibility and legitimacy of European institutions. This search for accountability was underlined by a highly symbolic gesture in September 2011. Herman Van Rompuy, the first president of the European Council, met Henry Kissinger, the American diplomat who is supposed to have coined the question: ‘What is the phone number of Europe?’ Van Rompuy made the gesture of giving him his business card – indicating that Europe could now be reached at any time. After the big expectations and the disenchantments raised by the constitutional episode, the designation of the low-profile holders of the positions of president of the European Council and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy sent a first warning signal. The management of the economic and financial crisis has shown both a (relatively) smooth functioning of the EU’s mechanisms regarding the difficulty of the challenges to be met, and the hegemony of the rulers of the major member states. The institutional equilibrium for the years to come is still being defined. What is happening, and what will happen, can be better understood by looking at historical precedents of major political changes at the European level and at the broader picture of long-running political, social and cultural processes at work in European societies.

The basic postulate here is that the European Union is an actual political order with hierarchies, mechanisms of domination and legitimating narratives. As such, it can be understood by analysing what happens at its summit. This is not a top-down assumption that high politics is performative and determines what is going to happen in administration and society. On the contrary, the ‘commanding heights’ of the EU are taken to reveal and to show, writ large, the deep trends at work in European bureaucracies and political communities. The European Council (EUCO) is taken as the nexus of European political governance. Other authorities are considered to the extent that they interact with the EUCO in relations of co-operation, rivalry or opposition. In this regard, the rotating presidencies play a first-order role, as they used to be directly linked with the presidency of the EUCO.

Two further ideas structure the global philosophy of this book. The first idea is to go beyond the infranational/national/supranational distinction. The postulate is that the three levels have become intertwined and have increasingly given birth to hybrid logics of action and settings. Infranational/national/supranational structures, loyalties and coalitions are constantly overlapping, combining and competing. From a theoretical standpoint, this means that a rigid opposition between intergovernmental and neo-functionalist logics is neither opportune nor sustainable. These interpenetrations between levels of governance cannot be dissociated from the hybridization of repertoires of actions. Actors in the different European arenas mobilize various discursive registers (political, diplomatic, technocratic, etc.) and vary these according to their needs and circumstances. It is true in policy sectors as well as in institutions at the top of the European political order.

The second argument is to consider an institution as a constant process of institutionalization, taking account of the different dynamics of the system and its actors. Institutionalization is here to be understood in different dimensions. It is the legal clarification of the status and the competences of organizations, especially the EUCO. It also refers to the progressive stabilization of relationships between institutions, in the context of the post-Lisbon European polity. Furthermore, institutionalization is the long process of sedimentation at work since the beginning of European integration, which informs the behaviours of actors and the ritualization of events. To be a member of the EUCO (and even more to be its president) or to hold the rotating presidency of the EU are roles that have been codified over the years. Recent institutional and political developments must be interpreted in the light of all previous practices and transformations.

Institutionalization of power at the heart of the European polity

This book deals with formal institutions at the core of the European political system while defining organizations as processes undergoing constant institutionalization, rather than as given realities. As such, the EUCO is treated both as the summit of the European political order and as a constantly evolving body; as a place of ‘high policies’ and as one of the channels of European policy-making; as a decision-maker and as a representative setting; as an arena for compromise and as a political ‘show’ capturing media attention. This multidimensional object calls for an interdisciplinary approach, with special place given to political sociology in order to put particular emphasis on the role of the actors of an organization in its process of institutionalization. Institutionalization may thus be understood as a triple normalization of the EU, in terms of the commensurability of the EU with other polities, its increasing production of norms, and its integration in the background of Europeans. These conceptual orientations offer guidelines for advancing scholarship concerning the commanding heights of the EU (the EUCO, the rotating presidencies, and the new institutional roles, with a focus on the presidency of the EUCO).

An interdisciplinary approach

Law is taken into account as a norm producing effects, as the codification of established practices, as a constantly evolving practice, and as an outcome that may be instrumental for different and contradictory uses. Non-formal structures and patterns of behaviour such as traditions, rituals, roles and symbols are to be understood as constitutive of the institutions. Editors and contributors decline to reify an opposition between different theoretical frameworks. They postulate that the concept of institutionalization may be fruitfully implemented in the analysis of European politics according to different interpretations, which ultimately converge towards common conclusions. In this way, all the various resources of European studies (and notably the various institutionalisms), public administration, history, political sociology, political anthropology and political theory are applied in the treatment of the notion of institutionalization.

Among these sources of inspiration, political sociology is a particularly fruitful one. This approach represents one of the most dynamic and innovative branches of European studies in the last decade (Guiraudon and Favell 2009 and 2010). It originates in the sociological dimension that was central to the founding scholarship concerning European studies (for example, Haas or Deutsch) but was largely ignored in later years before re-emerging strongly at the beginning of the 2000s (Saurugger and Mérand 2010). This political sociology of European integration not only treats European politics in terms of structures and processes but puts a special emphasis on individuals, social interactions and conflicts (Smith 2010; Belot, Magnette and Saurugger 2008). Norms are considered as constantly evolving social and cultural frames. As such, institutions are not only legal and bureaucratic structures but also codified worlds of transnational/supranational experiences, as the universe of the ‘professionals of Europe’ (Checkel 2007, Michel and Robert 2010, Georgakakis 2012).

Implementing institutionalization at the top of the EU

Formal institutions have an essential role in the European political system (e.g. March and Olsen 1984, Pierson 2000). They act as stabilizers by providing a form of continuity (North 1990), but are also subject to change. Their evolution is important for the policy-making circles as well as for the whole polity. The various neo-institutionalisms have helped to rehabilitate the role of institutions in the European integration process, but these approaches did not provide totally consistent explanations of institutional changes (Gorges 2001, Schmidt 2005). It is only with the concept of institutionalization that the neo-institutionalist theory is able to explain transformations that affect institutions (Olsen 2009).

In the EU, institutionalization means more rules, more formality, more stability, more ritualization, and developing roles that are able to shape attitudes. Institutionalization should not be understood as a linear, automatic and imposed path but rather as the conjunction of multiple and multidimensional processes, progressing at unequal speeds and interacting together. Institutionalization is a concept in itself that is fundamental for several theories of European integration. The neo-functionalist theory has found a new impulse in its use (Stone Sweet and Sandholtz 1997; Stone Sweet, Sandholtz and Fligstein 2001). However, these works dedicate little attention to formal institutions and consider mainly the process of institutionalization as a legal process, with a ‘hardening’ of EU law. By defining institutionalization as ‘the process by which rules are created, applied, and interpreted by those who live under them’ (Stone Sweet and Sandholtz 1997: 310), they reflect well its dynamic dimension but limit it to a legal perception. Although they foster stability, legal texts – consisting at their ‘summit’ of constitutions and treaties – are also symbolic constructions linked with the context and actors (Lacroix and Lagroye 1992).

In general, studies on institutionalization rarely tackle ‘consecrated’ institutions, meaning institutions already qualified as such in a political system. The crowning of an institution tends to reduce the inducement to analyse the upstream and non-juridical processes. But consecration as a formal institution has less importance than the mechanisms that lead to it; thus the result has to be dissociated from the processes (Jepperson 1991). Among the transformative processes, the infusion of value plays a major role in the establishment of ‘a self, a distinctive identity’ for the institution (Selznick 1957). The determinants in this regard are in particular the history of the institution, its environment, the people composing it and the interests defended.

The actors of formal institutions have almost systematically been overlooked although their interaction with the system is a crucial element. Actors are constrained by institutions (directly or through established roles), but the behaviours and visions of the actors are also vectors of either stabilization or change.

Most of the above reflections on the concept of institutionalization have been developed in the framework of the nation-state, but the normalization of the European political system has clearly resulted in them becoming equally relevant for the EU.

Institutionalization as a triple normalization of the EU

Political science has increasingly suggested that the EU is on its way to normalization. This diagnosis can be interpreted in three ways. First, the EU is a political system in itself, with all the relevant questions in terms of agency, legitimization and so on. As such, it can be compared with other political systems of the present or past (normal Europe). Second, normalization of the EU refers to the ever-growing diffusion of norms that have their source in European decision-making processes or are influenced by these (normalizing Europe). Norms can be legal rules, principles of public action, and social or cultural practices produced by the development of interactions between national, transnational and supranational levels. Third, normalization of the EU points to the multiple forms of the European impact on the spheres of experience and the day-to-day life of individuals and social groups (normalized Europe).

Regarding normalization as the commensurability of the EU with other polities, the purpose is to investigate ‘normal Europe’ as a government, as a full – if not complete and totally stabilized – political system. This approach is part of a flourishing research trend (for an extended presentation, see Smith 2010). The EU is characterized by its novelty but is not to be understood in terms of rupture; rather as the last step to date on the political continuum of the history of the continent. It maximizes characteristics of political modernity that have produced the nation-state, rather than suggesting entry into a post-modern and post-national era. Nations and states do not disappear; they are profoundly reframed in the context of European integration (Bickerton 2012).

The EU is part and parcel of this global evolution, touching all levels of political agency in Europe. Methodologically speaking, the normalization paradigm suggests that the EU is to be submitted to traditional questions of political science reformulated with suitable scope and in suitable form. Going beyond the so-called exceptionality of the European ‘unidentified political object’, the emphasis is put on power games, social resistances, symbolic dynamics and cultural path dependencies that are not different from what happens in national politics. This is not particularly surprising, as European and national politics overlap more and more. One is invited simply to question the level of autonomy of the Brussels arena, as well as the interdependence between member states and the European supranational level. The EUCO is a perfect case study, as it brings together the supreme authorities of the 28 member states in a single European arena whose rules invite compliance.

Addressing ‘normalizing Europe’ means understanding how the EU has increasingly turned into a source of law and formal or symbolic authority. New political regulative and organizational technologies (open method of co-ordination, benchmarking, Europe in concentric circles and so on) promote a ‘government at distance’, relying on the self-adjustment of society and individuals. Public action thus produces effects even when it is not directly exercised, through phenomena of imitation or contagion, well beyond the official fields of competencies of the EU. Since it is not objectified, this kind of domination is all the more efficient and constraining. In this book, the purpose is neither to search for the impact of European governance in the depth of European societies, nor to analyse the consequences of the numerous European policies. Rather, it is to study the mechanisms of compliance of actors in the elite circles of European power, and to assess the role of the top of the political order, namely the EUCO, in terms of policy-making.

Dealing with a ‘normalized Europe’ entails investigating the extent and modalities of the EU in collective representations and the lives of Europeans. Identifications with Europe vary in nature and intensity. What has prevailed for a long time among citizens is a relatively polite indifference towards Brussels, an attitude that has, however, become less polite and more resentful along with growing resistance against the EU since the Maastricht Treaty and the emerging of the economic crises. This propensity to ignore Europe, or to keep it at arm’s length, needs to be considered in relation to the usual distance between a citizen and national politics. The stake here is to understand whether or not the European frame of reference is part of the individual and collective identities of Europeans, whether it is in congruence or in conflict with other belongings.

A short state of the art on the heights of the EU

The sui generis nature and the various degrees of legal formalization of the European political system have long made it difficult to identify the ‘commanding heights’ of the EU. Consequently, the most permanent, organized and accessible institutions (European Parliament and European Commission) have attracted most of the research on European institutions in political science. Split between several levels and between several institutions, the executive power in the EU has generally been studied through the problems of leadership affecting this original construction. Its actors – mainly the EUCO and the various presidencies, generally qualified as intergovernmental or national elements – have been relatively neglected despite their importance and high media exposure.

Research pioneers have, however, paved the way for better understanding of the EUCO. A few years after its creation, Wolfgang Wessels dedicated his doctoral research to this emerging power (Wessels 1980) and then continued this study with other scholars (Bulmer and Wessels 1987, Hoscheit and Wessels 1988). These early analyses cast a new light on the roles and powers of the EUCO, as well as on its implications for the evolving European political system. Academic interest in this institution was revived a few years ago. Through a research project on ‘Power and negotiation in the EUCO’, Jonas Tallberg offered key findings based on rich empirical data. Tallberg and his co-authors concentrate on the interests and games of power (Tallberg 2006, Tallberg 2007, Johansson and Tallberg 2008, Tallberg 2008a, Johansson and Tallberg 2010), following a very different conceptual tradition to the one used in this book. Between these two research developments, apart from a few exceptions (e.g. Johnston 1994), ad hoc research on the EUCO was rare, but all books on the European political system or its institutions (e.g. Nugent 2006, Peterson and Shackleton 2012, Doutriaux and Lequesne 2008) now dedicate at least one chapter to the EUCO. In...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• PART I The European Council as an institution and a policy-maker
• PART II The EU presidency and the European Council – complementary or competitive?
• PART III Legitimization of the European Union
• Index