When politicization meets ideology : the European Parliament and free trade agreements

Published online: 12 November 2021Since the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament (EP) has considerably increased its competencies in European Union (EU) trade policy. At the same time, a ‘new generation’ of free trade agreements (FTAs), including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the United States, Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada, and the agreement with Japan, have been negotiated by the European Commission. Although existing literature has tackled the process of the EP's institutional self-empowerment in this policy area, there is no systematic research investigating the lines of conflict within the EP over FTAs. Through a newly collected dataset of all EP plenary debates between 2009 and 2019 on six relevant FTAs, we extract EP Members’ (MEPs) preferences by means of a manual textual analysis. We then test the explanatory power of the two traditional lines of cleavages within the EP over MEPs stated preferences: position on the left-right axis and support for EU integration. We find that both these dimensions fundamentally shape the conflict in the EP over FTAs. The impact of these two ideological cleavages is magnified in the context of politicized FTAs, namely the TTIP and CETA. Through these findings, the paper significantly contributes to the research on competition in the EP and, more broadly, to the understanding of EU trade policy and its emerging politicization dynamics.This article was published Open Access with the support from the EUI Library through the CRUI - CUP Transformative Agreement (2020-2022

Report on patterns of variation in DI across areas of core state power and instruments of integration

The paper summarises different patterns of differentiation and reintegration in core state powers during the post-Maastricht period, based on the EUDIFF-RES dataset. Moreover, it offers a theoretical framework able to explain the observed variation. The framework is further tested by means of short empirical illustrations taken from different policy areas. Overall, the EUDIFF-RES dataset substantially contributes to our understanding of CSP differentiated integration by revealing that the behaviour of states vis-a-vis core state powers varies greatly according to the kind of resource, as well as the costs and opportunities attached to it

Report on the expansion of the EUDIFF 1 dataset

The present report makes an overview of the progresses made so far in Work Package 5. At this initial stage, the main aim was to develop a new coding for core state powers in EU legislation. Such coding serves the purpose of expanding EUDIFF1 through new information on core state powers integration. The report is structured as follows: after a brief introduction, Section I presents a tripartite categorization of core state powers modes of integration. Section II tests the plausibility of the proposed categorisations through an empirical analysis that explores primary legislation from 1952 to 2016. Section III discusses the possibility of a more fine-grained distinction

Report on the expanded EUDIFF 1 dataset

This report provides a general overview of the dataset under construction for WP5, EUDIFF-RES, focusing on differentiated integration in core state powers (CSP) in the European Union (EU). The report explains the rationale behind the data collection and provides an outline of the information gathered so far. The aim of the report is to make the dataset easily accessible to anyone who wishes to utlise it for further research

Differentiated integration and core state powers : the EU budget and Justice and Home Affairs

This paper studies two areas of Core State Powers (CSP), i.e. the EU budget and Justice and Home Affairs. The two cases have the aim to reconstruct how Differentiated Integration (DI) has developed over time in these two specific domains. While the aim is the same for both cases, the way the cases are structured is substantially different. This is due to various reasons. First, the politics of the EU budget go back to the early days of the EU, while JHA is a post-Maastricht feature. This implies that the budget case study concentrates on a much longer time span. Second, DI in the budget interests several member states, while in JHA it is a phenomenon circumscribed to fewer members. Finally, the politics of the budget are decided through intergovernmental negotiations, while JHA is a rather supranationalised policy that relies a lot on secondary legislation and EU executive bodies such as EU agencies.This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 822304. The content of this document represents only the views of the InDivEU consortium and is its sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contain

New Nordic pathways? Explaining Nordic countries’ defence policy choices in the wake of the Ukrainian war

In May 2022 Finland and Sweden took the historical decision to apply for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). One month later, after a three-decade long opt-out, Denmark voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to join the European Union (EU) common defence policy (CSDP). Combining organised hypocrisy with post-functionalism, the article focuses on the normative and pragmatic concerns underlying states’ interaction with international institutions. Empirically, the article analyses the long-term political-institutional dynamics between Nordic countries, the EU CSDP and NATO since the end of the Cold War, and how they have been reshaped by the crisis provoked by the Russian attack on Ukraine.</p

When politicization meets ideology : the European Parliament and free trade agreements

Published online: 12 November 2021Since the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament (EP) has considerably increased its competencies in European Union (EU) trade policy. At the same time, a ‘new generation’ of free trade agreements (FTAs), including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the United States, Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada, and the agreement with Japan, have been negotiated by the European Commission. Although existing literature has tackled the process of the EP's institutional self-empowerment in this policy area, there is no systematic research investigating the lines of conflict within the EP over FTAs. Through a newly collected dataset of all EP plenary debates between 2009 and 2019 on six relevant FTAs, we extract EP Members’ (MEPs) preferences by means of a manual textual analysis. We then test the explanatory power of the two traditional lines of cleavages within the EP over MEPs stated preferences: position on the left-right axis and support for EU integration. We find that both these dimensions fundamentally shape the conflict in the EP over FTAs. The impact of these two ideological cleavages is magnified in the context of politicized FTAs, namely the TTIP and CETA. Through these findings, the paper significantly contributes to the research on competition in the EP and, more broadly, to the understanding of EU trade policy and its emerging politicization dynamics.This article was published Open Access with the support from the EUI Library through the CRUI - CUP Transformative Agreement (2020-2022