12. The institutions of Justice and Home Affairs:

This chapter analyses the institutions of EU member state cooperation on issues such as asylum, refugee protection, migration, border controls, police cooperation, and judicial cooperation. Once seen as the prerogative of member states and as defining features of states’ identities as sovereign, complex incremental institutional change established new ways of working on internal security issues and reconfigured the strategic setting from which these issues are viewed. The recent history of these developments provides insight into the EU’s institutional and organizational development, while also demonstrating how, why, and with what effects these issues have become politicized in EU member states. The politicization of migration and asylum, in particular, complements this chapter’s focus on institutional developments by identifying the source of key pressures and strains to which these institutions have been exposed. The most recent COVID-19 pandemic restricting the free movement of people across Europe, the 2020 fire that broke out at the Moria refugee camp at Lesbos, and the European Commission’s ‘New Pact on Migration and Asylum’ of September 2020 raised serious questions about the content and viability of key components of the EU’s approach to security and human rights. From being a policy arena that was not even mentioned in the Treaty of Rome or Single European Act (SEA), internal security within an ‘area of freedom, security, and justice’ (AFSJ) is now a key EU priority. This chapter pinpoints key developments, specifies institutional roles, and explores the relationships over time between changing conceptualizations of security and institutional developments.

Institutions, Power, and Institutional Balance

Institutional balance, as opposed to strict separation of powers, characterized the disposition of legislative and executive power in the EEC from the outset. The chapter is divided into four temporal periods. The initial period runs between the Rome Treaty and the Single European Act 1986 (SEA). The discussion begins with the initial disposition of institutional power in the Rome Treaty, and charts the way in which this shifted during the first thirty years. The second section covers the period between the SEA and the Nice Treaty, in which there was growing consensus in normative terms as to the appropriate disposition of primary legislative power, but continuing contestation as to power over secondary rule-making and the locus of executive authority. These tensions were readily apparent in the third period, which covers the Constitutional Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty. The fourth period runs from the advent of the Lisbon Treaty to the present. The EU has been beset by a series of crises, which had implications for the powers of the respective EU institutions and the institutional balance between them.

2. The constitutional base of the Union

This chapter discusses the Treaties which together represent the primary law of the European Union; its constitutional base. These include the Single European Act 1986; the Treaty on European Union (the Maastricht Treaty) 1993; the Treaty of Amsterdam (signed June 1997, entered into force 1 May 1999); the Nice Treaty (adopted December 2001, entered into force 1 February 2003); and the Treaty of Lisbon (signed December 2007, entered into force 1 December 2009).

The European Economic Community's regional policy during the ‘age of disorder'. From ‘harmonious development' to market-oriented policies (1972-1987)

This article examines the transformation of the European Economic Community's (EEC) regional policy paradigms from the early 1970s, when negotiations for the creation of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) began, until the approval of the Single European Act. The article identifies this period as the beginning of a deep transition from demand-side "interventionist" and "neo-mercantilist" models — typical of certain regional policies used up to that time by member states (primarily by Italy) — towards more openly neoliberal models. My analysis of the harsh conflicts within the Regional Policy Committee (the national technocracies' representative body in charge of managing the ERDF) and between the committee and the European Commission demonstrate that this outcome was not at all taken for granted. It was determined, above all, by the overload of objectives of EEC regional policy in a context of scarce resources, and by the progressive lack of trust in the role of public intervention.

Intergovernmental Conference: Three Case Studies of EC/EU Institution Building

Intergovernmental conference (IGC) within the European integration context is a vehicle for institutional change. Based on the majority decision in the Council, the representatives of member states’ governments convene to debate proposals for amendments to the founding treaties of the European Union (EU) and make decisions on the agreed changes, which are then subject to the ratification process in the member countries according to their constitutional requirements. This procedure was used for almost all treaty revisions until the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007 changed the rules. An ordinary revision procedure was introduced that assumes a role for the Convention to draft changes to the treaties, while keeping the IGC as a next step in the process. A simplified revision procedure was introduced for making adjustments to the internal policies and actions of the EU according to the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, thus replacing the IGC by a unanimous decision of the European Council. The Merger Treaty of 1965, the Single European Act in 1986, and the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997 represent distinct steps in shaping the perception of the role of the IGC as an institution in the political process within the European Communities and the EU.

COLLECTIVE MANIFESTATION OF EUROSCEPTIC PARTIES AND GROUPS CRITICAL IDEAS IN EUROPEAN UNION TREATIES

The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (EU) increases awareness of how far the Euroscepticism ideas spread among EU's members. As one of the pivotal EU members, the UK's withdrawal will bring consequences, especially how other countries' members perceived this action. The research focuses on how far the Eurosceptic party's critical ideas are manifested in the European Union treaties. This type of research is descriptive and qualitative. The scope of this research will focus on the Euroscepticism parties and movements in Austria, France, Italy, Netherland, and the United Kingdom. In this study, the authors use the concept of Euroscepticism to explain the classification of parties into the Euroscepticism Hard and Soft category and Neil J. Smelser's Value-Added Collective Behaviour scheme to describe the determinants of their collective action against the European Union. The result of this research is that Euroscepticism spreads throughout Europe by manifesting their critical ideas through six determinants factor, such as structural conduciveness, structural tension, growth, and spread of general beliefs, trigger factors, participant mobility, and social control. The manifestation of critical ideas carried out by Euroscepticism parties in the three countries can be seen through the Single European Act, Maastricht Treaty, Treaty Establishing Constitution for Europe, Referendum British Exit. The culmination of collective action by the Eurosceptic parties was the launch of EU critical campaigns (No to EU!) As well as a significant vote in the EU parliamentary elections.

The European Parliament in EC external Relations, From the Inception of European Political Cooperation to the Single European Act

European Political Cooperation represented one of the most innovative and yet vague and contested areas of cooperation among EC Member States. As an intergovernmental practice that left no room for supranational institutions, it did not contemplate any formal role for the European Parliament (EP). Focusing on the EP and EPC after the 1979 elections, this article aims at making three points. First, it argues that direct elections gave the EP stronger political arguments to claim more powers but parliamentary demands on EPC were not different from those emerged already in the early Seventies. Second, given Member States’ resistance to parliamentary pressures, the EP developed some original initiatives in international affairs, in order to undermine the intergovernmental features of EPC. Parliamentary actions were particularly effective on human rights issues. Finally, it points out that with the signing of the Single European Act, the role of the EP in foreign affairs remained, at best, limited.

A Parliament for the People? – The European Parliament’s Activism in the Area of Social Policy From the Early 1970s to the Single European Act

The formal powers of the European Parliament (EP) prior to the Single European Act (SEA, 1986) were marginal. However, this limited formal role did not correspond to the perception of the early Members of the EP (MEPs) as to what role the EP should play in Community policy-making. Predominantly driven by pro-integrationist ideas of ever-closer union - and of an ever-stronger Parliament - MEPs became activists for deeper political as well as institutional integration from the institution’s beginnings in the 1950s. This article studies the EP’s emerging legislative influence through the lens of Community social policy, a policy area with a particularly strong ideational dimension. Perceiving a lack of public support for and identification with the Community project, MEPs invested considerable time and effort prior to the SEA into attempts of creating a broad Community social policy. In so doing, the delegates hoped to convince the member states’ citizens of the added value of closer European integration whilst simultaneously enhancing their own institution’s position. Based on an extensive collection of EP archival documents, this article contributes to a deeper understanding of the EP’s gradual empowerment at a time when the Treaties foresaw little more than a consultative assembly.

Pushing for a Greener Europe: The European Parliament and Environmental Policy in the 1970s and 1980s

The European Parliament (EP) has long been derided as a powerless talking shop, notably before the 1979 elections and the granting of new co-legislative powers with the Single European Act. This article argues instead that already in the 1970s and early 1980s, the EP was a decisive player not only in initiating, but also in defining - and refining - European policy. Drawing on the case of the nascent environmental policy, the analysis demonstrates how the EP, its committees and members (MEPs), skilfully utilised the limited range of instruments available to them. In the early 1970s, the EP pushed for the inclusion of environmental policy into the EC policy portfolio and tried to influence its contents. In the early 1980s, after a decade of environmental legislation, the EP was an important advocate of making the already existing environmental law work and of adding new European laws. Their arguments and practices illustrate that MEPs were clearly aware of the limits but also of the opportunities the EC institutional system provided. Before as well as after direct elections, the EP exploited environmental scandals in the European public sphere - Rhine pollution, Seveso - to push for a greener, more environmentally friendly Europe. In a federalist spirit, the EP pursued institutional objectives at the same time: the strengthening of EC-level policy making and legal instruments, along with its own self-strengthening.

From Recurring Reference to Identity Trait: the Emergence of Social Justice in the Political Discourse of the European Communities (1950-1986)

Although the ECSC and the EEC were originally endowed with a narrow social di­mension, in the 1950s references to both Communities as promoters of social jus­tice were rather common in the European Parliament, especially in the speeches of Christian Democratic and Socialist members. In the following years, the progres­sive implementation of the social legislation of the two treaties, the first discus­sions on the launch of a regional policy, and the signing of the first association agreements with third countries, contributed to further spreading the idea of a pecu­liar European sensitivity to solidarity, fairness and inclusion. Widely shared in the European Parliament from the late 1960s, the perception of the Community as a natural bearer of social justice soon began to also permeate the statements of the other institutions, and was then formalized by the Declaration on European Identity approved by the Copenhagen summit of December 1973. From that moment on, the idea of social justice as a guiding principle of the entire European project was echoed in all solemn occasions, to be finally inserted in the founding treaties in 1986 by the Single European Act.