National and Regional Symbolic Boundaries in the European Commission

Towards an Ever-Closer Union?

Daniel Drewski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000414424
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The process of European integration and the transfer of political authority from the national to the European level have led to the emergence of a field of EU policy making in Brussels, which attracts professionals and experts from all EU member states. This book contributes to research on the dynamics of social integration unfolding at the heart of this field. Based on in-depth interviews with officials working for the European Commission – the EU's supranational organization – the author explores the perception and negotiation of symbolic boundaries related to their diverse national and regional backgrounds. In line with their cosmopolitan attitudes and role-conception as European civil servants, Commission officials tend to de-emphasize national and regional divisions among them. Nevertheless, subtle symbolic boundaries remain in connection with their diverse organizational cultures, working language preferences, professional values and influence and career prospects. This nuanced account of patterns of social categorization and group-making in a European context will appeal to sociologists with interests in European integration and the emergence of social fields and groups beyond the nation state.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003107439-1

1.1 Background and research question

The European Union (EU) is the most integrated regional bloc of countries around the world. What began in 1951 with the foundation of an organization of six European countries to create and regulate a common market for coal and steel, expanded since into an organization that experts are struggling to find a proper name for: an organization somewhere between a “confederation” and a “federation” of states. The process of European integration is characterized by two related dynamics, commonly referred to as “deepening” and “widening.” On the one hand, cooperation between the member states has deepened with the creation of a Single Market, the increasing transfer of political authority from the national to the European level and the emergence of a supranational legal order. On the other hand, the original community of six member states has enlarged in successive waves to 28 member states at its peak (though it recently contracted back to 27 due to the “Brexit”¹). It enlarged to Northern European countries that were initially reluctant to join, to Southern European countries that had emerged from authoritarian regimes, and most recently, to 12 countries, most of them located in Central and Eastern Europe, that had been separated from Western Europe by the “Iron Curtain” during the Cold War.

However, the story of European integration is not limited to this “systemic” perspective of the integration of national political, economic and legal systems. It can also be told from the perspective of the people from different European² countries that advance European integration and bring the EU to life. The dismantling of national border controls and the EU’s free movement regime have created a unique opportunity for Europeans to become mobile and to study, work or live abroad. This has led to the emergence of new forms of European sociality, which have become most visible in the metropoles of the EU (Favell 2008; Recchi and Favell 2009). Particularly Brussels– the informal “capital of the EU”– has increasingly attracted professionals and experts from across Europe to work in and around the European institutions (Büttner et al. 2015; Georgakakis and Rowell 2013; Kauppi and Madsen 2013). These include, for example, the officials of the EU (sometimes referred to as the “Eurocrats”), the Members of the European Parliament and their staff, Permanent Representatives and other diplomats, the employees of European professional associations and interest groups, members of EU-related expert groups, think tanks and academic organizations etc. They are the new “elites” of the EU, who will be the focus of this book.

Scholars have long been interested in patterns of identification and group-making among those who, like the Brussels-based professionals of this study, have taken advantage of the EU’s open internal borders and moved to study, work or live abroad. On the one hand, there is ample evidence from survey research suggesting that they tend to feel more “European” and hold more cosmopolitan attitudes than the average population. They have the chance to routinely interact with people from other countries and establish positive relationships with them, which makes them discover their commonalities across national lines (Fligstein 2008). They are also more exposed to the European institutions because they encounter them more often in their daily lives (or even work for them), which may also generate a greater sense of attachment to Europe and the EU polity (Herrmann et al. 2004). Consequently, some scholars argue that they begin to form a new “European” social group beyond the nation state (e.g., Díez Medrano 2011).

On the other hand, these EU elites and professionals have diverse backgrounds, which may continue to shape the way they define themselves and relate to people from other European countries. They have been raised in countries with different histories, cultural heritages and politico-institutional arrangements, for example in former “Western” and “Eastern” European states. They speak (at least) 24 different languages, the number of official languages of the EU member states. Some of them come from large and powerful countries like Germany and France, others from smaller and politically less significant ones. Some have grown up in societies with high levels of socio-economic development in North Western Europe, others in poorer ones in South Eastern Europe. A few studies suggest that such a high degree of heterogeneity may render the emergence of a common bond more difficult and complicate cooperation in the European institutions (e.g., Fuchs and Klingemann 2002; Delhey 2007; Gerhards 2007).

This book takes a qualitative approach on this topic and focuses on the subjective perspectives and experiences of EU professionals from different countries. In particular, it explores the social categories through which they define themselves and each other. To what extent do national³ and regional⁴ differences continue to matter to them? And if so, how do they become articulated? Answering these questions will provide important insights into the dynamics of social integration unfolding at the heart of the EU.

These questions will be addressed by drawing on in-depth interviews with a very particular group of EU professionals: the officials of the European Commission. The European Commission is one of the institutions of the EU’s “institutional triangle.” While the European Parliament represents the citizens of the EU and the Council of the European Union represents the national governments, the Commission is the EU’s supranational organ representing the “interests of the Union.” It has extensive competences that include executive powers, the exclusive right to legislative initiative and the power to launch infringement procedures against member states (Nugent and Rhinard 2015). Its political leadership is exercised by 27 Commissioners nominated by the EU member states. The day-to-day functioning of the Commission is ensured by permanent officials constituting an autonomous European civil service. According to scholars like Cris Shore (2000) and Didier Georgakakis (2013), Commission officials have fashioned themselves into a unique European administrative elite. This book focuses on European Commission officials for the following reasons.

First, the Commission civil service is a genuine “microcosm” of the EU. It unites officials from 28 countries (even after Brexit, some British civil servants remain employed), who work and interact with each other daily. At the time of the last study phase for this book in 2017, the Commission employed 13,475 higher level officials, temporary and contract agents. Most of them were from Italy (1,387), Germany (1,373) and France (1,330). But some also come from Luxembourg (43), Cyprus (71) and Malta (116), revealing a representation roughly according to a country’s population size (European Commission 2017). This multinational staff has to navigate potential national and regional differences and work together for the common European good. It is within the Commission, for example, that French and German officials began to cooperate after two devastating wars, or that “East” and “West” are growing together after the fall of the Iron Curtain. In other words, the Commission is where the “real existing Europe” takes place.

Second, in the Commission we can find a high national heterogeneity, but a minimal social heterogeneity. Focusing on the Commission allows to “control for” the variable social class. Commission officials share a social class position by virtue of their employment, so that articulations of nationality are not compounded by issues of social class membership like in many other settings (Wimmer 2013: 38–43). According to Erikson’s and Goldthorpe’s well-known class scheme, Commission officials belong to the class of higher-grade professionals, administrators and officials (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992). They earned between 4,600 and ca. 19,600 Euro monthly at the time of this study,⁵ with low taxation plus various allowances (Nugent and Rhinard 2015: 203–204). Admission to the Commission is highly selective: in 2015, for example, the European Commission received around 31,400 applications for only 159 available entry-level posts as generalist administrators– this is a success rate of merely 0.5%.⁶ Correspondingly, according to the recent survey by Kassim et al. (2013: 40–41), Commission officials are mostly highly qualified: 70% hold a postgraduate degree, most commonly in economics or business.

Finally, of the European institutions in Brussels, the EU Commission is a rather unlikely case for the relevance of national and regional differences. As we will see in more detail in chapter 2, the Commission is a supranational organization and the most “European” of the European institutions, devoted to the “interests of the Union.” Commission officials are not national representatives, but European civil servants. Most of them are recruited via a selection procedure that is largely independent of the influence of national governments. The Commission is not organized along national lines, but along departments, functions and policy expertise. Thus, in some ways, the Commission is a “least-likely case” (Eckstein 2000) for the relevance of national and regional differences compared to the other European institutions. If they are relevant in the Commission, there is a good chance that they are also relevant in the field of EU policy making at large, where the influence of national governments is more direct.⁷

There have been a few studies that have attempted to open the “black box” of the European Commission and explore the multinational character of its staff. Political scientists have primarily examined whether the attitudes and behaviors of the Commission staff support either a supranational or an intergovernmental role (Page 1997; Hooghe 2001; Kassim et al. 2013). On the one hand, the European Commission is a supranational bureaucracy which is supposed to act independently of national governments and to represent solely the European interest (e.g., Haas 2004). On the other hand, the Commission is embedded in a political environment in which national governments try to assert their interests and influence (e.g., Hoffmann 1966; Moravcsik 1993). Analyzing the impact of nationality on the beliefs and behaviors of its staff is crucial to assess whether the Commission tilts towards the supranational or intergovernmental pole. In consequence, scholars have examined whether nationality shapes the preferences of Commission officials towards European integration in general (Hooghe 2001, 2012; Ellinas and Suleiman 2011) and certain policy outcomes (Egeberg 2006; Wonka 2008; Hartlapp et al. 2014; Gehring and Schneider 2018).

This study does not aim to provide another account of how the Commission’s internal organization and the beliefs of its staff impact on its political role in the EU. Rather, the primary goal of this book is to study everyday meaning-making and processes of identification and categorization occurring within it. It continues in the vein of previous anthropological and sociological studies that have examined to what extent Commission officials constitute an autonomous European civil service with a shared esprit de corps and what role cultural diversity plays within the organization (Abélès et al. 1993; Bach 1999; Shore 2000; Suvarierol 2007; Ban 2013; Georgakakis 2013, 2017). It contributes to this literature by systematically tracing how Commission officials construct and deconstru...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The EU Commission and its civil service
• 3. Reflecting on national and regional differences in the EU Commission
• 4. Getting things done: Symbolic boundaries of organizational cultures
• 5. Speaking English or French? Symbolic boundaries of working language
• 6. Being an honorable European civil servant: Symbolic boundaries of professional values
• 7. Making it in the Commission: Symbolic boundaries of influence and career chances
• 8. Mental maps of Europe
• 9. Summary and conclusion
• Appendix
• Index