European Union

""The European Union is facing a profound crisis and is confronted with multiple challenges. Over the last two decades, it has experienced a series of dramatic changes to its powers, its institutional design, its constitutional framework and its borders. At the same time, the uneasy relationship between European citizens and elites has complicated both the reform and the function of the Union. While the Lisbon treaty provided some answers to crucial questions, it did not clarify the nature of the EU, which remains at the crossroads of federal and intergovernmental logic. The current economic and financial crisis puts the EU’s legitimacy further under pressure and creates the impression of a turning point.

This book provides a concise analysis of the EU and its dynamics by paying particular attention to its day to day operation. It aims to help students and scholars understand its evolution, its institutions, its decision-making and the interactions between the EU and various actors. Avoiding abstract theorizing, the authors propose an easy to read analysis of how the Union works while recognizing the complexity of the situation. Throughout the book, the key issues of European integration are addressed: democratic deficit, politicization, the role of member states, institutional crisis and citizen involvement.
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""In the 1980s when Bourdieu set out to examine the structural homology between the grandes écoles and the French ‘field of power’, he stressed that ’one cannot study the ruling class, the elite, the dominant, without elucidating the conditions under which they reproduce themselves’. Since then – through increased European integration – the national fields of power have been challenged by the emergence of a transnational EU elite and ’the field of Eurocracy’. Drawing on Bourdieu’s idea of a structural homology, this explorative paper discusses a project on the relation between a number of educational institutions and the formation this new transnational elite.

Methods/methodology

Drawing on primary sources from the Historical Archives of the European Union, case studies of two institutions which were founded with the mandate of providing Brussels with a new and loyal bureaucratic corps will be presented.

Expected outcomes/results

Discussing the College of Europe in Brugge, Belgium (’the elite training centre for the European Union’s political class’), and the European University Institute in Florence, Italy (’EU’s own Brookings Institution’), this paper will illustrate the ideological genesis and future trajectory of these two institutions and what role they have played in the formation of a transnational EU elite.

Author Information

Petter Sandgren (submitting/presenting), Department of History and Civilization, European University Institute, Florence - Petter.Sandgren@EUI.eu
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This chapter examines the COCOPS survey on public administration managers for Spain. We argue the slow implementation of public administration reform, plus the radical austerity policies implemented by the government since the crisis, help explain why it is that Spanish public managers perceive much reform to be ineffectual or slow in coming.

The common European electricity market requires both market integration and transmission grid expansion, including trans-border interconnectors. Although the benefits of increased interconnectivity are widely acknowledged, expansion of interconnectors is often very slow. This paper gathers insights on the reasons behind this “grid-lock” drawing on the study of the German-Polish border. Although two interconnectors already exist, the trade is blocked by unplanned electricity loop flows. A third interconnector has been discussed for years, but saw little progress in spite of declarations of support on both sides. Drawing on the existing literature on the topic of grid expansion we identify four hypotheses for the grid-lock: inadequate financing; diverging interests; governance and administration problems; and different actors’ motivations, trust and security perceptions. We evaluate them using the empirical material gathered through document analysis and stakeholder interviews conducted in Germany and Poland. None of the hypotheses on its own can explain the “grid-lock”. However, while financing has not been a major obstacle, divergent interests had an impact on the project delay, administrative and governance problems are a great hindrance on the technical level, while motivations influence interstate political relations and policy shaping. EU support and closer bilateral cooperation provide opportunities to address these challenges.

"The aim of this report is to evaluate the extent and nature of undeclared work in Croatia and the policy approaches and measures currently employed to tackle this sphere.
Extent and nature of undeclared work
In recent years, there have been substantial efforts to reduce undeclared work in Croatia. Faced with significant deficits in the public budget, the government has sought effective policy responses that would result in increased compliance. Nonetheless, it is hard to know whether these strategies are resulting in a decrease in the prevalence of undeclared work. While some studies of the magnitude of undeclared work suggest that it is continuing to decline in size, others suggest that the trend is in the opposite direction.
Examining the nature of the undeclared economy, the 2013 Eurobarometer Survey on undeclared work highlights how much undeclared work in Croatia is for and by close social relations; 57% of the respondents who were carrying out these activities stated that the purchasers were their friends, colleagues or acquaintances. Generally, individuals with a lower level of education are the most susceptible for carrying out undeclared work in Croatia. Men, moreover, are almost three times more likely to work undeclared than women. Nearly one third of people engaged in undeclared work are manual workers, and almost every fourth undeclared worker is unemployed, while about every seventh undeclared worker is retired. Therefore, these three groups, namely manual workers, unemployed people and the retired, represent about 70% of all undeclared workers in Croatia. This will be important when designing policy responses.
Turning to the firm level, the findings are that those in agriculture and related industries are the most likely to recognise competition from unregistered or informal firms as a serious obstacle to their business. In addition, small and medium-sized firms are far more likely to identify the existence of the unregistered units in their sector than are large firms. Finally, domestic owned and non-exporting businesses more often witness the presence of unregistered firms and the constraints caused by them in comparison with exporters and firms in foreign ownership.
The most common reason for individuals engaging in undeclared activities is the lack of formal employment opportunities, indicating that unemployment is the central issue that requires consideration when combating undeclared work in Croatia. In the case of retired individuals, there are two subgroups highly susceptible to engagement in undeclared work. Those with a small pension find their incentive in an insufficient level of income, while privileged ones, who took early retirement, are often motivated by the surplus of time. The most salient features of the labour market that provide disincentives for formal employment are the high tax burden and benefit traps. From the perspective of businesses, the main obstacles to formalisation are the non-transparency and instability of the tax system, followed by complexity of administrative procedures.
An important additional factor fostering informality in Croatia, so far neglected in endeavours to tackle this phenomenon, is the low level of tax morale. Particularly concerning is the fact that young people are the most prone to opportunistic non-compliant behaviour, indicating a possible long-term trend in such a high share of undeclared work. Having in mind that 9% of people surveyed in the European Values Study are highly tolerant of cash-in-hand activities, and 7.1% highly tolerant of tax
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evasion (with an additional 23.2% and 14.8% respectively tolerant of these activities to some extent), one can conclude that socio-cultural factors play an important role in making decisions about (non)compliance in Croatia.
Institutions, policy approaches and measures
A low level of trust in public institutions in Croatia suggests that the government should revise its tactics when tackling undeclared work. So far, repression has been the most prevalent approach. Nevertheless, as Walsh (2012) argues, practicing repression in situations when there is a weak psychological contract between citizens and the authorities can additionally deteriorate the willingness of citizens to comply and consequently result in even higher levels of non-compliant behaviour. Therefore, there is a need to put greater emphasis on an enabling compliance approach, especially on commitment and curative measures, which do not appear to be fully recognised as effective strategies in a Croatian context.
An additional problem in this regard is the weak coordination among ministries and various government departments when pursuing the fight against undeclared work. Each of them defines their own separate targets and this often results in an overlapping and/or awkward division of responsibilities. This raises a need for reorganisation of the existing institutional system in order to achieve better efficiency. One viable option is the establishment of a central coordination body, which would harmonise activities in this field. In that regard, one might argue whether a recent reform in the inspection system was indeed a move in a positive direction, or whether it will result in the deteriorated effectiveness of enforcement. A further problem is the weak social dialogue in Croatia in this context characterised by numerous disputes between the government and trade unions. As such, tripartite social dialogue currently has a limited role in tackling undeclared work, therefore representing a further area for the achievement of a significant improvement."

Sport annually mobilizes millions of people across Europe: as practitioners in a wide variety of competitive, educational, or recreational contexts, and as spectators, who are physically present or following events through the mass media. This book presents original research into modern sport funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Its aim is to examine the distinctive contribution made by this complex phenomenon to the construction of European identities. Attention is focused on sport's social significance, as a set of mass-mediated practices and spectacles giving rise to a network of images, symbols, and discourses. The book seeks to explore, and ultimately to explain, the processes of representation and mediation involved in the sporting construction, and subsequent renegotiation, of local, national, and, increasingly, global identities. It offers a survey of key developments in sporting Europe - from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, and from the Atlantic to the Urals - presenting findings by acknowledged international experts and emerging scholars at the level of individuals, communities, regions, nation-states, and Europe as a whole, in both its geographical and political incarnations. Its focus on representation offers a broadly conceived, and consciously inclusive, approach to issues of 'Europeanness' in modern and contemporary sport.

"Giving citizens a direct voice in this debate is essential. European integration should go hand in hand with reinforcing the Union’s democratic legitimacy, engaging every citizen in discussions on how the European Union should evolve in the years to come, both economically and politically. This is what the European Commission has aimed to do in two main ways: first, by organising more than 50 Citizens’ Dialogues across Europe, across European regions, across generations and social strata; and second, by mobilising and bringing together renowned European artists and intellectuals in a reflection on how to stand up against populism for a common European future.

This issue of the BEPA Monthly Brief highlights these two initiatives at a time when the ‘New Narrative for Europe’ project has culminated into a Declaration and the Citizens’ Dialogues are offering a sense of direction."

This work investigates the systemic factors behind cross-country variability in the transnational media coverage of foreign news in the EU in 2010. Using a large dataset on the transnational coverage of news by 148 EU national media, the paper maps the network of EU transnational citations and performs a quantitative assessment of their systemic determinants via the estimation of a gravity model of news. Nine empirical hypotheses are tested. Size and economic development of the target (source) country are positively (negatively) associated with the probability of coverage. Historical, linguistic and economic ties increase this probability. The evidence on the effect of the countries’ participation in the currency union is weak: once the historical levels of trade integration and the effects of the sovereign debt crisis are accounted for, there is no robust evidence of a higher integration of the media spheres within the euro area.

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Transatlantic and nationalist tensions have ballooned since the inception of the credit crunch. People are asking: Where did the global debt crisis originate, in Europe or North America? What are the long and short-term causes? This article will pinpoint at least nine long-term and short-term causes of the crisis, drawing on two recently published books by David and Lyric Hale, and John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper. These causes include: the initial departure from the Bretton Woods era gold standard in 1971, the deregulation of both the U.S. and European banking systems in the 1980s and 1990s, the securitization of sub-prime mortgages, Goldman Sachs’ cross-currency swaps to hide Greek debt, the excessive levels of Greek debt, the structural flaws of the EMU, Germany’s insistence on low interest rates, Germany and France’s violation of the budget limits in 2003, and the cognitive biases of financiers and legislators on both sides of the Atlantic. Until governments stop issuing blank checks to the “too large to fail” banks and establish a sturdy system of checks and balances, a second and more destructive financial tsunami will engulf the world.

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