Search results

In a recent article in the pages of this journal, the author outlined the hypothesis that, although there have been recent evolutions in European governance effected by the Lisbon treaty, these changes have not brought about any convergence in the national drug policies of European member states. The original article focused on developments in the national drug policies of key member states and based the assessment on their maintenance of key, and significantly different, national policy aims. Standring, in this edition, has offered a critique of that article suggesting that the author has been overly pessimistic in her understanding of the nature of drug policy integration at the European level and that soft integration tools have allowed a high degree of policy convergence in this controversial area. This paper aims to strengthen and confirm the author's position by examining the tools of European drug policy integration.

Key policy strategies (for example, the European Drug Strategy and Action Plans, European level anti‐drug trafficking frameworks and recent implementations on newly developed psychoactive substances at the European level) are examined here for indications of success or otherwise in the harmonisation (or convergence) of European national drug policies.

Ultimately, even under these new terms of reference, the paper finds that attempts to either harmonise or converge European national drug policies have done little more than scratch the surface.

The paper suggests that neither the top‐down regulation, here described, nor the soft convergence that Standring envisages are desirable for European drug policy making where they are implemented with the aim of making national drug policies more similar.

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

This chapter outlines the major findings of a survey on the rationale of the European Union actions for supporting tourism development and whether these undertakings can lead to a distinctive tourism policymaking. According to Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and European Union documentation, the most important instrument for the implementation of policy is based on tourism-related separate actions analysis, in a way that would enable one to compare the policies at the national and international level. This study suggests that tourism becomes a field whose issues and actions are taken at the regional level. This calls for creating the necessary conditions for the development of the tourism product at the European Union level. Until now, European Union practices do not portend the formation of a distinctive policy in the tourism industry.

The concept of smart village emerged in the European Union (EU) level policy debates on rural development in 2016, following the stakeholder-driven Cork 2.0 Declaration. It was developed through a pilot project initiative on ‘Smart, Eco, Social Villages’ and spelled out in the ‘EU Action for Smart Villages’ initiative.

While the concept of smart villages remains unclear for many, substantial work has been carried out to develop the concept and to prepare the underlying supporting instruments at the EU level over the last three years.

The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of how the concept of smart villages has evolved at the EU level and to draw some recommendations for future policy work. The chapter reveals difficulties in the utilization efficiency of the EU funds in rural areas and shows a patched landscape of fragmented policy instruments. The key arguments are that while the mixture of these tools is important, the glue that binds them together is still missing, and that the general utilization efficiency is not sufficient. The authors offer a set of five recommendations for the short to medium term, which is needed for the successful implementation of the smart approach: integration, simplification, communication, innovation, and ‘rural proofing.’

This paper aims to review the evidence on Europe’s economic performance and on the role played by policies pursued at the European Union (EU) level, using the competitiveness framework as the conceptual lens.

Why has Europe not made more progress on upgrading its competitiveness over the past few decades, despite the many initiatives that the EU has launched?

It finds Europe’s sluggish performance to be driven by a failure to adjust the EU’s policy approach to fundamental changes in the competitiveness context and challenges faced by European economies.

Based on this analysis, the paper suggests a new role for the EU in supporting EU member countries and regions in achieving higher levels of competitiveness.

European spatial governance underwent substantial changes over the past two decades with the expansion of European territorial cooperation programmes, the introduction of new instruments for cooperation and an increasing role of financial and regulatory framework in sector policies. Against this background the paper develops the argument that today’s European spatial governance has become more diversified and fragmented, leading to an increasing role for sector policies, and that the cumulative effect of these diverse activities on domestic planning processes are under researched.

This paper summarises the legal recognition of spatial planning and categorises European spatial governance as being composed of spatial policies, financial instruments and governance frameworks. This paper then presents three explorative case studies: the Common Transport policy as one European Union (EU) sector policy, a cross-border cooperation supported by the European Regional Development Fund and macro-regional cooperation.

This paper concludes that the increasing regulatory impact of European spatial governance on domestic spatial planning goes far beyond the pure Europeanisation of narratives and agendas or “ways of doing things”. Furthermore, this paper illustrates that European spatial governance is characterised by a process of sectoralisation, supported by the EU’s regional policy and the provision of governance tools. The paper calls for further investigation of the interrelatedness of these processes and their reciprocal influences on planning practices.

The value lies in recognising the incremental changes that have come alongside European integration, and highlighting the importance of these processes for domestic planning processes. This paper highlights the hidden process of sectoralisation that leads to an increase in planning competences at the European level.

The focus of this paper is the economic theory of the plans for the European Monetary Union. Part 1 demonstrates that economists, bankers and policy makers know very little about monetary policy. Part 2 explains the errors of the common practice of defining money by its functions. Because any monetary policy must rest on a definition of money it seems reasonable to conclude that a flawed definition might lead to problems with monetary policy. Part 3 applies this insight to the plans for a common currency in Europe. Because of uncertainties about the timing and details of the implementation, some important considerations are necessarily speculative. They are relegated to appendices. Appendix 1 comments on the timing and authorship and responsibility for the official reports with their unspecified authors. Appendix 2 supplies some grounds for doubting the ultimate durability of the European Monetary Union focusing on reasons that are historical, economic and pragmatic. Because the entire movement is driven by politics, not economics, Appendix 3 considers some of the relevant political issues. The conclusions summarize and speculate on possible reasons for successful outcomes.

In a globalised economy, the EU, being self-confident, could shape international standards by defending and promoting its own socioeconomic model. Social democratic parties rhetorically confess the need for a ‘European social model’, but meanings and ways to achieve it differ largely. In a comparative case study on the programmatic positioning of the German Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands and the Spanish Partido Socialista Obrero Español, the parties' perspectives on the integration mode and their handling of the Economic and Monetary Union framework and its crisis over the last decade are traced. Although similar paths from neoliberal convictions of the ‘third way’ to a positive integration process in a fiscal union setting are found, the scope and levels vary, illustrating the abilities of both parties to meet new transnational challenges. The crisis of the Eurozone was a definitive turning point for the positioning of the Social Democrats in Spain in favour of more political and fiscal integration. In contrast, their German comrades already advocated increased social integration of the EU since 2005 but remained very cautious regarding reforms of the economic framework established by the Eurozone.

The chapter furnishes empirical evidence about the extent and profiles of autonomy of EU agencies, the modalities whereby they are steered and controlled, and the interactions they have in EU policy networks. It thus provides the bases for a more complete picture of the EU multi-level administration.

The research is a survey-based design. A questionnaire was administered between July 2009 and April 2010 to 30 EU agencies included in the study population. The questionnaire was sent to the executive director of all the agencies included in the study. Questions were closed-ended, either in the form of multiple choices – with one answer or with check-all-that-apply and an option for ‘other’ to be filled – or in scale format. The resulting data set included ratio, interval, ordinal, and nominal scales. The reference model employed for the investigation relies on the analytical model developed within the framework of the research project COST Action IS0651 CRIPO (Comparative Research into Current Trends in Public Sector Organization – see also ‘Acknowledgements’) for the study of public agencies in Europe (Verhoest, Van Thiel, Bouckaert, & Lægreid, 2012).

EU agencies display a rather low level of managerial, especially financial, autonomy; conversely, they enjoy relatively high policy autonomy. As to the way in which multiple ‘parent’ administration steer EU agencies, it emerges a composite picture, in which the crossroads of steering and control by the parent administrations and accountability by the agency lies in the executive director. In terms of interactions within policy networks, EU agencies interact in a significant way with the European Commission, with national-level agencies in the pertinent policy field, and with specific technical bodies where they are part of the configuration of the policy sector, whilst interactions with national ministries as well as with other EU agencies are rare. No single model can capture in full the overall features of EU agencies, although the ‘community level institution’ model seems to capture a number of the profiles of these agencies.

Both the literature on EU multi-level administration and research agendas in public management can benefit from inclusion of – and in-depth empirical knowledge about – EU agencies. The chapter provides important empirical evidence to these purposes.

EU agencies are actors in European public policy-making, albeit to a varied extent depending on the sector. The extent of autonomy and the way in which they are held to account are crucial aspects for an enhanced understanding of their influence on European public policy-making, as is their location in European policy networks.

Research presented in this chapter is the first systematic empirical investigation of EU agencies encompassing networking, steering and control and autonomy of EU agencies, based on primary data.

For both the Czech Republic and Poland, globalization is intricately linked to European integration and Europeanization. Globalization and European integration have strongly influenced the policies of these countries over the last 17 years. The Czech policy of accommodation and the Polish policy of initiation toward the European Union (EU) show two different ways how the individual Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries can react to the process of Europeanization. The Czech and Polish policies within CEE area are illustrative examples of reactions to the supraterritorializing effects of globalization. These two CEE countries have answered some of the challenges of globalization through sub-regional cooperation in the Central European Initiative (CEI), Visegrad Group (VG), and the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA), followed by accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and later joining the EU. The Czech Republic and Poland are gradually entering the area of supra-territoriality. But concurrently both, as EU member states, participate in building and strengthening external territorial borders of the EU through the Schengen Agreement. Despite sharing the experience of disappearing of the EU internal borders, the Czech Republic and Poland have not completely relinquished their existing territorial identity. In the context of the break-up of the Czechoslovak federation it is also useful to examine the issues of deterritorialization and reterritorialization.