The Nordic Countries and the European Union

Still the other European community?

Caroline Howard Grøn, Peter Nedergaard, Anders Wivel, Caroline Grøn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138024243
• eBook ISBN: 9781317536604
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In European policy-making, the Nordic countries are often viewed as a relatively coherent bloc; in international and European affairs the Nordic position has traditionally been conditioned on being different from and better than Europe.

This book offers a coherent, original and systematic comparative analysis of the relationship between the Nordic countries and the European Union over the past two decades. It looks at the historical frame, institutions and policy areas, addressing both traditional EU areas such as agriculture and more nascent areas affecting the domestic and foreign policies of the Nordic countries. In doing so, it examines how the Nordic approach to European policy-making has developed and explains why the Nordic countries are similar in some respects while differing in others when engaging with EU institutions. In highlighting the similarities and differences between the Nordic countries it explores what lessons – positive and negative – may be drawn from this approach for the Nordic countries and other small states.

This book will be of interest to scholars, students and practitioners engaged with the Nordic Countries, EU politics and policy-making, European politics and comparative politics.

1 Still the ‘other’ European Community?

The Nordic countries and the European Union

Caroline Howard Grøn, Peter Nedergaard and Anders Wivel

Still the other European Community?

In European policy-making, the Nordic countries are often viewed as a relatively coherent bloc. They share a number of characteristics, including lengthy democratic traditions, relatively high levels of wealth, Protestant traditions, and the low levels of corruption that traditionally characterise social democratic welfare states (cf. Archer 1996; Arter 2008; Kuisma 2007; Miles 1996), and, with the occasional exception of Sweden, they are usually regarded as small states (see e.g. Jakobsen 2009; Wivel 2014). In international and European affairs, the Nordic position has traditionally been conditioned on being different from Europe and better than Europe (Wæver 1992). For many years, the Nordic countries – often characterised as ‘reluctant Europeans’ (Miljan 1977) or the ‘other European Community’ (Turner and Nordquist 1982) – explored alternative solutions to membership of the European integration project. They did not give up on their attempt to create a Nordic customs union until 1970 and the first Nordic country, Denmark, joined the European Community as late as 1973. Finland and Sweden first joined in 1995, and Norway and Iceland remain outside the European Union (EU). While Denmark and Sweden are EU members, they have opted out of the Economic and Monetary Union; moreover, Denmark has maintained opt-outs regarding defence issues and justice and home affairs since 1993.

This volume aims to provide a systematic comparative study of the Nordic countries and the EU. We describe how the Nordic approach to European policy-making has developed over the past decades and explain why the Nordic countries are similar in some respects while differing in others when engaging with EU institutions in a number of policy areas. The book basically asks if the Nordic countries are still the ‘other’ European community or if time and their different roles vis-à-vis the EU have turned them into a less coherent bloc.

The book makes three contributions to the current literature on the Nordic countries and the EU.

• First, the book provides an up-to-date overview of the relationship between the five Nordic countries and the EU and how this relationship has developed since the 1990s.

• Second, the book systematically compares how the Nordic countries relate to the EU by analysing three dimensions of this relationship: (1) the historical development of the relationship (Part I); (2) the relationship between the Nordic countries and EU institutions (Part II); and (3) the interaction between domestic and EU levels in policy development (Part III).

• Third, the book explores whether there is a particular Nordic approach to EU policy-making and which lessons – positive and negative – may be drawn from this approach for the Nordic countries and other small states.

One important finding of the volume is that the Nordic states have actively pursued their opportunities in the European integration process while at the same time guarding their exceptionalism and distinctiveness; the result is a pragmatic and functionalist Nordic ‘yes, but ...’ approach to European integration cutting across various policy areas (discussed in Chapter 15).

Small states in a post-Lisbon EU

The book is basically about how five small states relate to the EU. The EU has seen a number of changes in recent years. The Lisbon Treaty changed the formal rules of the game, but informal changes have also challenged the positions of small EU member states. The decreasing powers of the European Commission, traditionally viewed as the defender of the interests of small states both formally and informally, and changes in voting procedures in the Council of Ministers have weakened the smaller member states. Similarly, increased cooperation in intergovernmental areas, such as security and defence, recently clearly reviled in the attempts to solve the euro crisis, illustrate how a more intergovernmental stance among many heads of state challenges the influence of small EU member states (Grøn and Wivel 2011). Hence small states have had to adjust to an EU where the big states were not as willing to accommodate small states as had previously been the case. In this regard, the Nordic countries share the challenges of EU membership with other small EU members. They are faced with changes in the institutional structure that challenge their position and influence within the EU.

At the same time, the Nordic states have a particular set of challenges and opportunities in common. Integration is increasingly moving into areas that challenge how the Nordics have organised themselves. Increasing integration with respect to justice and home affairs, social and labour market policy and health all challenge how the Nordic countries traditionally have organised their welfare states and labour markets (see Chapters 10 and 14 in this volume). In this regard, they face a common challenge from EU membership; but they also have shared opportunities. All of the Nordic states are comparatively well organised and have efficient civil services. They are recognised as being efficient when dealing with EU issues (e.g. Panke 2010a), and they hold expertise in certain areas, such as environmental protection, which they occasionally use skilfully to gain influence.

Hence the Nordic countries depend strongly on an EU which poses challenges to all small states, but they also have distinctive features that make their opportunities to deal with these challenges of a particular kind. Beyond asking if the Nordic states are ‘still the other European Community’, we are also interested in exploring how they deal with the challenges facing small EU member states and asking whether these challenges undermine the supposed unity of the Nordic countries within and outside the EU.

Nordic states in the EU: what do we know?

The book contributes to different strands of literature. Several books have been published focusing either on the EU and its member states (e.g. Bulmer and Lequesne 2012) or the politics of the EU more generally, therefore also including the role of member states (e.g. Bache et al. 2011; Farrell et al. 2002). In these writings, the focus is typically on larger member states; the Nordics are dealt with together or not at all, or one Nordic state is selected for closer scrutiny. Our volume differs from these books by providing a much more comprehensive and systematic comparison of the Nordic countries’ relationships with the EU than is possible in a general book on the EU member states.

A second strand of literature comes closer to the focus of this volume by providing comparative case studies of the Nordic countries and the EU, including the prominent and much-used works by Ingebritsen (1998), Hansen and Wæver (2002) and Miles (1996). However, these differ in various respects from the present volume. They were published some years ago and, accordingly, none of them provides an up-to-date analysis of the Nordic countries and the EU. The books by Ingebritsen and by Hansen and Wæver construct and systematically apply sophisticated theories in order to understand Nordic similarities and differences with respect to the European integration process, but it is beyond the scope of any of these books to go into detailed studies of specific policy areas or Nordic relations with EU institutions in the manner of the present volume. The volume edited by Lee Miles has a scope similar to that presented here. It has no section on Nordic relations with EU institutions, however, and the choice of analysed policy areas reflects the fact that the book was published more than 15 years ago.

A third strand of literature focuses on how, why and to what extent the Nordic countries are Europeanised. These issues are addressed by Pedersen and Olsen (2008), Bergman and Damgaard (2000), Jacobsson et al. (2004) and Rieker (2009), who analyse the impact of EU membership for Nordic countries on national political systems and policies. Our volume differs from these books by drawing systematic comparisons across three dimensions (history, institutions, policy areas) and in its stronger focus on Nordic EU participation as a process of ‘uploading’ as well as ‘downloading’.

In addition to these strands of literature, our volume constitutes a more specialised addition to general introductions to Nordic politics (e.g. Arter 2008), Nordic states in international relations (e.g. Schouenborg 2013), and analyses of small states in the EU (e.g. Panke 2010b; Steinmetz and Wivel 2010; Thorhallsson 2000). It also adds a comparative dimension to single case studies of the relationship between a particular Nordic country and the EU (e.g. Archer 2005; Larsen 2005; Miles 2005; Rauno and Tiillikainen 2003; Thorhallsson 2006).

This volume is rightly seen as a supplement to these strands of literature and aims at bridging the literature on Europeanisation, especially its foundation in institutional theory, with the more specific studies of Nordic states in the EU coming out of an international relations context. Hence we develop a three-step analytical approach, which we have asked the contributors to apply in their respective chapters.

The analytical approach of the book

This book asks if the Nordic countries are to be considered a community. In order to answer this question, we undertake a number of analyses. We examine individual member states over time (Part I), member states vis-à-vis EU institutions (Part II) and, finally, member states vis-à-vis policy areas (Part III).

First step: a comparative analysis

Each chapter includes an assessment of whether the particular country under examination generally acts in a similar or different manner in comparison with other countries regarding the historical period, institution or policy area in question; and, more specifically, where and how they differ and where and how they are similar. In practice, this is done by combining diachronic and synchronic analysis. In the second and third sections of the book, each chapter thus opens with a brief analysis of the development of the policies of each of the states under scrutiny within this particular subject area. The aim of this part of each chapter is to establish how and why Nordic positions on various aspects of the EU developed over time. This is followed by a more comprehensive comparative analysis of how each of the states analysed in the chapter are responding to recent developments, thereby allowing us to identify the current state of the relationship between the Nordic countries and the EU within this particular subject area. While the chapters vary in terms of the number of member states included, each chapter includes at least two Nordic countries; some of the chapters cover EU insiders, while others covers both EU insiders and outsiders.

Second step: an institutionalist explanation

The second step of the analytical procedure zooms in on the institutionalist explanations of these findings. Each chapter draws on institutionalist theory and considers a number of explanations as to why the Nordic states act as they do. This theoretical choice is made for two reasons. First, it secures an analysis of the field that is simultaneously focused and broad by providing an analytical anchor to each chapter without forcing a particular set of hypotheses upon chapters that tackle very different aspects of the relationship between the Nordics and the EU. Second, the study of Europeanisation (e.g. Featherstone and Radaelli 2003), an important part of the subject studied here, emerged in combination with and as a result of the ‘Golden Age’ of new institutional theory and its rediscovery of the fact that ‘institutions matter’ (R...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Still the ‘other’ European Community? The Nordic countries and the European Union
• Part I The historical development of Nordic–EU relations
• Part II Nordic relations with EU institutions
• Part III Nordic positions on EU policy areas
• Part IV Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index