Despite attention focusing on Juncker’s new Commission, the European Council will remain the real centre of EU decision-making

The appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker as the new President of the European Commission generated substantial media attention over the summer, which has continued during the Commissioner hearings held in the European Parliament. Uwe Puetter assesses how these developments sit alongside his theory of ‘deliberative intergovernmentalism’, under which the European Council is viewed as holding a central role in the EU’s decision-making process. He argues that the appointments made in 2014 are largely in keeping with the new intergovernmental modes of decision-making which have emerged over the last two decades, and that far from attempting to undermine the European Council’s role, Juncker can be expected to develop close co-operation between the European Council and the Commission

The study of national preference formation in times of the Euro crisis and beyond

The aim of its introduction is threefold: We start from a conceptual clarification of preference formation, defining it provisionally as a political process ‘by which social actors decide what they want and what to pursue’. After an analysis of different conceptual and theoretical approaches, the introduction offers a critique of liberal intergovernmentalism, one of the major explanatory frameworks of preference formation in European Union studies. This critique centres on the context in which national preference formation took place during the European Monetary Union crisis. This special issue argues that the conceptualisation of preference formation as state-based, unidirectional and unchanged by the regime is deeply problematic. Preference formation is typically messy and non-linear and rarely closed to the possibility that both preferences and positions may change, sometimes radically, it is even more complex, context-sensitive, and open to a wide range of influences in a multi-level system such as the European Union. In other words, the traditional understanding of preference formation as a purely domestic process of interest aggregation and competition require revision given the multiple factors that shape preferences in general and in the interdependent policy-making of the European Union in particular

The European Union in disequilibrium: new intergovernmentalism, postfunctionalism and integration theory in the post-Maastricht period

The crises that weigh heavily on the European Union (EU) in the 2010s have underlined the continued importance of integration theory, albeit in ways that go beyond classic debates. Postfunctionalism, in particular, has shown how European integration and its problems stand on shifting political cleavages. And yet, postfunctionalist claims that such changes would create a constraining dissensus in the EU rests uneasily with the intensification of European integration since the Maastricht Treaty was signed. This article offers a new intergovernmentalist explanation of this puzzle, which shows how mainstream governing parties have circumvented rather than being constrained by Eurosceptic challenger parties and challenger governments. The result, it contends, is not a constraining but a destructive dissensus that adds to the EU’s political disequilibrium. Understanding the persistence of this disequilibrium and its potential to unwind disruptively is a key challenge for contemporary integration theory

Swift X-Ray Observations of Classical Novae. II. The Super Soft Source sample

The Swift GRB satellite is an excellent facility for studying novae. Its rapid response time and sensitive X-ray detector provides an unparalleled opportunity to investigate the previously poorly sampled evolution of novae in the X-ray regime. This paper presents Swift observations of 52 Galactic/Magellanic Cloud novae. We included the XRT (0.3-10 keV) X-ray instrument count rates and the UVOT (1700-8000 Angstroms) filter photometry. Also included in the analysis are the publicly available pointed observations of 10 additional novae the X-ray archives. This is the largest X-ray sample of Galactic/Magellanic Cloud novae yet assembled and consists of 26 novae with super soft X-ray emission, 19 from Swift observations. The data set shows that the faster novae have an early hard X-ray phase that is usually missing in slower novae. The Super Soft X-ray phase occurs earlier and does not last as long in fast novae compared to slower novae. All the Swift novae with sufficient observations show that novae are highly variable with rapid variability and different periodicities. In the majority of cases, nuclear burning ceases less than 3 years after the outburst begins. Previous relationships, such as the nuclear burning duration vs. t_2 or the expansion velocity of the eject and nuclear burning duration vs. the orbital period, are shown to be poorly correlated with the full sample indicating that additional factors beyond the white dwarf mass and binary separation play important roles in the evolution of a nova outburst. Finally, we confirm two optical phenomena that are correlated with strong, soft X-ray emission which can be used to further increase the efficiency of X-ray campaigns.Comment: Accepted to ApJ Supplements. Full data for Table 2 and Figure 17 available in the electronic edition. New version of the previously posted paper since the earlier version was all set in landscape mod

The Eurogroup as a space for intergovernmental deliberation

Economic policy coordination in the euro-zone relies heavily on the self-commitment of the participating countries given the soft nature of the coordination framework foreseen in the treaty provisions of Economic and Monetary Union. Presenting a theoretical framework for the analysis of the impact of the method of informal ministerial discussions within the Eurogroup on the coordination process the paper argues that the creation of spaces for intergovernmental deliberation are crucial for fostering political unity among the finance ministers of the euro-zone countries, the Commission and the European Central Bank

The European Council has become the new centre of politicalgravity in EU decision-making

This month saw another in a long line of European Council summits aimed at reforming the institutional framework of the eurozone. Uwe Puetter looks at the rise of deliberative intergovernmentalism in the European Union through European Council summits, and finds that while agreement is required at the highest level to make this system work, the process is remarkably stable

Integration without supranationalisation: studying the lead roles of the European Council and the Council in post-Lisbon EU politics

This special issue follows up on a stream of recent contributions on what has been identified as a particular phase of post-Maastricht European integration: the \u2018new intergovernmentalism\u2019 and \u2018the intergovernmental union\u2019. This literature considers the European Union\u2019s (EU) core intergovernmental forums for policy coordination, the European Council, the Eurogroup and the Foreign Affairs Council as central to EU decision-making. These bodies perform functions related to policy initiation and implementation which were traditionally associated with the European Commission. Intergovernmentalisation is primarily detectable in new areas of EU activity such as economic governance and foreign affairs which operate mainly outside the community method and in policy sectors which depict a mix of legislative and non-legislative decision-making mechanisms, such as justice and home affairs and energy. More integration is achieved without significant further supranationalisation. These developments affect how the Union\u2019s main decision bodies operate and how interinstitutional relations are structured

Catlyst of integration: the role of core intergovernmental forums in EU politics

This article synthetises the contributions of the special issue along three major lines of reasoning. First, the European Council is considered as a catalyst of post-Maastricht integration. This is mainly due to its policy-making role in core new areas of European Union (EU) activity. Second, inter-institutional relations that have emerged between the European Council, the Council, the Commission and the European Parliament in the post-Maastricht era and in particular the post-Lisbon era are seen to reflect both the centrality of the European Council and a novel way of initiating and implementing EU policy. Finally, the political process within and around the European Council is considered that has taken place against the background of the most recent crises conditions. In particular, the simultaneous occurrence of consensus and domination is identified as a key element of further research related to the \u2018new intergovernmentalism\u2019 and the \u2018intergovernmental union\u2019