ZEI Discussion Paper 2017 - 2008

Every Presidency of the European Union seeks to leave its own mark in one way or another on one or more particular facets of the evolving process of the European Union. This becomes even more important for a Member State who, like my own country, Malta, has been at the helm for the first time. In my view, the three most prominent aspects of the Maltese Presidency are the setting out of a joint vision for the European Union for the years to come; the formal commencement of the Brexit process; and the particular focus on the EU’s Mediterranean Policy. This paper seeks to address these three matters by first having a look at what happened during the six months’ term of the Maltese Presidency and then by expressing my views on the results achieved and on the way forward.

This discussion paper tries to analyze the future cooperation between the European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean, based on the challenges of the main integration process. The paper tries to identify the main areas of cooperation in order to enhance governance in this region and taking into account the political landscape of the European Union in the next few years.

The multiple crises of the European Union demand rigorous honesty in the analysis of structural deficits. The Need to overcome the set of current crises with more Long-term and substantial perspectives is all-pervasive. In order to renew the EU it is essential to recognize the external pressure which is rooted in fundamental changes around the world. It is time to make the EU fit for a comprehensive global role as the Global Strategy 2016 is suggesting.

The energy policy of the European Commission has deepened integration of EU natural gas matters. Energy cooperation at EU level and policy mechanisms for cooperation with third countries are harmonized to a large extent. The author concludes that integration strategies of the EU Commission follow the spillover-logic as set out by the theory of Neofunctionalism - a concept first developed by Ernst Bernard Haas to explain the post-war creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) as peace-preserving institutions. According to this theory, integration in one sector creates further integration in related policy sectors out of inherent necessity. The EU Commission has used spillover-strategies in the EU-Russia Energy Dialogue, in the Trilateral Gas Talks, in the Energy Community and in major pipeline projects such as the "Southern Gas Corridor". These platforms offer opportunity structures for supranational action which enable the realization of the "Energy Union". Intergovernmental backlashes ("Spillback-Effect") as observed in the 'gas crises' of 2006 and 2009 as well as the contractual state-to-state reality of Intergovernmental Gas Delivery Agreements present the most significant obstacles for a coherent EU external energy policy in natural gas.

One of the key arguments of the ‘leave’ side in the Brexit referendum of June 2016 was that 60 % or even 75 % of British legislation originated in Brussels, not in London. Examining the impact of European Union on national legislation in Finland, we show that contrary to the widely accepted ‘Delors myth’, only 17.8 % on national laws adopted between 1995 and 2015 were related to the EU. Evidence from other European countries corroborates our findings: the share of domestic laws with an EU impulse is higher in some countries but never even close to the 80 % threshold suggested by the Delors myth.

Michael Gorbachev’s policy of reforms (1985-1989), the revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe (1989), and the breakdown of the Soviet Union (1991) opened the door and paved the way for the Eastern enlargement of both the EU and NATO. Both of these were the result of geoeconomic and geostrategical decision-making from 1999 to 2007. These enlargements did not occur simultaneously, but rather with a time lag due to the fact that the EU enlargement, which came later, was more complex, costly, and time-consuming with regard to negotiations than was NATO’s Eastern enlargement. The Baltic States as well as the countries of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe desired the Eastern enlargement of both the EU and NATO. Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic were the first to be integrated. The Eastern enlargement of the EU was more or less accepted by Russia, while it at first observed skeptically and ultimately opposed that of NATO. It was not by accident that on the part of the USA and the Federal Republic of Germany, nothing legally binding was offered toward Russia, but as early as 1990, oral assurances and statements of confidence were made to it with regard to not expanding NATO any further to the East. The Eastern enlargement of the EU constituted an historic opportunity for Brussels to expand the acquis communautaire as well as its trade and the Single Market all the way to the Baltics in the north and to the Black Sea in the south. This was also closely connected with a medium-term and long-term perspective integrating the “Western Balkans”. Decision-making in favor of the EU and NATO by all of those states and regions was seen by Russia as a concept of the Western conqueror as well as a geopolitical and geostrategical disadvantage concerning its own position. In light of the demonstration of military strength and the renaissance of classic hard power policy made by Russia when beginning measures of destabilization in the eastern areas of Ukraine and then occupying and annexing Crimea, the Eastern enlargement of NATO appeared to be justified and necessary by the new members of the transatlantic alliance. In spite of Western security policy, Russian countermeasures could be taken for granted, causing the continuous potential for conflicts and threats of war in these areas of Europe. Therefore, the question may be raised as to whether there had been missed opportunities before for avoiding these aggressions by binding Russia closer to the EU earlier on.

In the past year, most of European and American citizens could confirm to have heard at least once something about an ongoing negotiation regarding a free trade agreement European Union and United States are likely to sign, namely TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership). Thus, after a decade of misunderstanding, during which the two sides of the ocean have never appeared to be so distant, Transatlanticism apparently got back on track by promoting the most significant free trade area both in economic and geopolitical terms. Could TTIP represent the “Renaissance of Transatlantic relations”? Is TTIP the bridge that can reconnect the two sides of the Atlantic? The aim of this work is to understand in which sense TTIP could bring closer EU and US on the one side and strengthen the Transatlantic region vis-à-vis the rest of the world on the other.

The British have voted to leave the EU. The ‘BREXIT’ debate is emblematic of the populist forces sweeping Europe and the United States. Distrust of elites has propelled the forces of European disintegration and fragmentation. This British vote has international implications. The system of international norms and accepted policies, which in 1990 and the past decades delivered Germany and Europe whole, free, and in peace in a widening European Union, is now at risk. Today, ZEI Fellows face a multitude of challenges and will need to meet these challenges and defeat threats to transatlantic values and to the peaceful international order. They are now finished, yet just beginning. The Center for European Integration Fellows are capable of achieving greatness. Now it is up to them.

The partnership between the European Union and 79 countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific – united as the ACP group of states – is based on the Cotonou Agreement. This unique and legally binding treaty is the only existing one which includes countries on four continents. It defines EU-ACP relations in the fields of development aid, trade and political dialogue. The Cotonou Treaty will expire in 2020. ZEI Director Prof. Dr. Ludger Kühnhardt takes stock with the EU-ACP partnership and makes bold proposals for its future: He calls for a strategic maturation and the negotiation of an “EU-ACP Association Treaty for Development”. He focuses on thematic priorities, discusses regional particularities and projects a stronger global visibility, especially in the United Nations, of the EU-ACP grouping beyond 2020.

The arrival of people at the Southern shores of Europe has become a major issue for the European Union and those Member States at the rims of the Mediterranean. The measures implemented and laws enacted by the European Union have mostly a security and military tenor. This Discussion Paper analyses how migration has become a security issue in Europe and the response that governments have given to the current situation.

The topic of energy security was for a long time left aside in the European Union. However, times are changing as the new European Commission announced a Framework Strategy for the Energy Union. The Energy Union is presented as the way to correct the European Union energy paradox, stating that the European Union, which was created around Energy (ECSC and EURATOM), sixty years later does not have a common energy security policy. In this context dependency to gas imports coming from Russia is perceived as a real threat for the energy security of the European Union revealing that the lack of diversity of energy sources as well as the variety of national policies in the area of energy security are the main reasons for this vulnerability. ZEI Research Fellow Thomas Panayotopoulos analyses the current energy dependency situation focussing on its causes and the energy union as a possible solution.

In the 15 years since the introduction of the Euro, the integration process within the European Economic and Monetary Union has seen rapid development in terms of both breadth and depth. Exclusively responsible for the monetary policy of the Eurozone, the European Central Bank has continued to adjust to meet the challenges brought about by these changes. The paper explores financial and monetary integration in the Eurozone and reviews the reasons, specific performance and impact of changes in the European Central Bank’s decision-making mechanisms. The purpose of which is to deepen and expand understanding in academic circles of the European economy and the European Economic and Monetary Union, as well as their development trends.

2014 was a watershed year for the geopolitical positioning of the European Union. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, Europe is no longer exporting stability but has begun to import instability in an unprecedented way. The neighborhood policy needs a fundamental review as non-European actors pursue policy concepts and strategies that run counter to EU norms and interests. ZEI Director Prof. Dr. Ludger Kühnhardt argues that the values of the Atlantic civilization have come under pressure in a world which tends to be influenced by new conflicts or a secular nature.

From 1995 to 1999 Monika Wulf-Mathies served as EU commissioner responsible for regional and cohesion policy. She tells us the story of the EU Commission under President Jacques Santer with regard to the historical development of the preparation of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), the Union Treaty of Amsterdam (1999) and the EU-Eastern Enlargement. She touches also controversial aspects of the Santer Commission, which led to her collective demission in 1999. According to Wulf-Mathies the increase of EU's democracy deficit is result of an erosion process of the common institutions caused by the nation states which contributed to their weakness. The democratic substance of the union suffers because of the 'summarization' of the EU decision making processes. Monika Wulf-Mathies argues in favor of the community method, which needs revitalization. She proposes European democracy enforcement and transfers of the national budget und economy policies to EU bodies. This eyewitness talk offers an actual EU analysis as well as an assessment of the Santer Commission.

ZEI Director Prof. Ludger Kühnhardt recalls the leading ideas of federalism as territorial equivalent for political pluralism . Celebrating the 80th anniversary of Bonn historian and political scientist Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Schwarz, he reflects on the emerging EU domestic policies in ZEI Discussion Paper C 225.

One million signatures from at least seven European Member States: Fulfilling the conditions of the European Citizens’ Initiative requires a communication campaign, which manages to reach and touch the citizens, as well as to encourage them to act. This empirical study analyses, which methods in this regard are successful or rather counterproductive. It comes to the conclusion that a variety of factors are decisive, and that these factors can differ in their manifestation – such as the availability of financial resources, the emotional potential of the issue or a sophisticated network of supporters.

In a theoretical context, the European Union is generally interpreted through the prism of integration theories, which in turn reflect the ever changing empirical reality of the integration process. ZEI Director Ludger Kühnhardt asks if and to what extent the process of European integration has begun to generate a specific political philosophy which uses the EU - and not the classical notion of the state – as the starting and reference point for its reasoning. Kühnhardt examines examples – such as the European notion of civil rights and the notion of the Union itself, but also critical categories such as euroskepticism – which indicate that the EU itself is beginning to be the starting point and frame of reference for a reflection on the common good. For now, a political philosophy in the context of the European Union exists only in an embryonic stage, but the topic may generate intellectual insights through further and deeper research.

ZEI Director Ludger Kühnhardt is pleading for the development of governing in the EU as a European federation. He discusses the proposals which Poland's Foreign Minister Sikorski presented in autumn 2011 and develops them further. Amidst frustration and shock over the sovereign debt crisis of several EU member states and beyond the crisis management that has dominated the European discourse for the past years, Kühnhardt discusses the political perspectives that will follow the establishment of the planned fiscal union. He pleas for a solidarity union rooted in the notion of a European society.

Since 2009, ZEI is engaged in a research project titled "Shaping Globality". Following methodological and conceptual work, the scholars engaged in this project have begun to reflect the consequences of the "global turn" on key notions of social order. The new ZEI Discussion Paper brings together several scholarly papers on key notions of social order under the conditions of globality, written by academics of Bonn University: space (Ruth Knoblich/Robert Meyer), norm (Andreas Marchetti), world government (Christian Schwermann) and knowledge (Maximilian Mayer). The ZEI Discussion Paper is edited by Ludger Kühnhardt and Tilman Mayer.

After 12 years of negotiations in order to conclude a Free Trade Agreement between the EU and MERCOSUR, the global financial crisis has imposed new conditions on their strategic alliance. The purpose of this ZEI Discussion Paper is to measure the impact of changing global patterns of trade and Foreign Direct Investment on the relations between the EU and MERCOSUR. This will be done while addressing the new factors influencing negotiations, with particular emphasis on Brazil's new role as an agent of dynamic change in MERCOSUR’s positioning on the international scene, as well as the shift of economic power toward Southeast Asia and other emerging economies. The main conclusion of this ZEI Discussion Paper points out that in both regional integration blocs, change leading to an efficient negotiation process means not only a change in trade negotiation positions but, above all, a shift in the political perception of strategic relationships allowing for the consolidation of common interests and views in a changing world.

This ZEI Discussion Paper shows how developments in Europe have been the most important variable in the monetary integration process in West Africa. It argues that the changing political landscape in Europe has altered the nature of incentives behind the interest of foreign stakeholders in the West African region. This in itself creates new opportunities for a region‐wide monetary integration program in West Africa. The ZEI Discussion Paper argues that the above objective can best be attained through the gradual expansion of the membership of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) in order to absorb members of the Second Monetary Zone which has been on the drawing board for over a decade now. The ZEI Discussion Paper also makes a case for the European Union to support the above scheme.

The demise of the Soviet Union resulted in dramatic changes in the international order. This ZEI Discussion Paper does examine EU-Russian relations since the end of the Cold War in a theoretical context of realist, liberal, supranational and intergovernmentalist schools of thought. It is argued that the evolutionary process of the relations has incorporated the different explanations made by the three different perceptions.