Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

New White Paper Underlines Why Europe Needs To Be More Open

Vivien Schmidt and Matt Wood 13th March 2017

Vivien Schmidt

Vivien Schmidt

The European Commission’s new white paper ‘On the Future of Europe’ recognises how serious the EU’s crisis of legitimacy is. Perhaps for the first time from the Commission itself, there is an acknowledgement that the Union faces a number of options for its future, not merely involving greater integration but potentially a reigning in of regulatory competences and a greater focus on areas where EU-level regulation works best. It even floats the option of a movement back to solely focusing on the single market.

While assertively neutral on five options, the paper seems to support a multi-speed approach, with more integration for member states who want it, and more opt outs for those who don’t. Our view is that this ‘differentiated’ approach is pragmatically useful, but it carries a number of risks for transparency and accountability. Better inclusion and openness for the public in EU decision-making must accompany any kind of differentiated integration, along with further democratisation, if the EU wishes to rebuild the trust and legitimacy the white paper acknowledges it has lost.

Matt Wood

Matt Wood

The ‘democratic deficit’ – old problem, old solution?

Discussion about the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’ has been going on for decades, so the issues the white paper brings up are not new. However, for the first time there seems to be a genuine recognition of the need for change. The Commission’s discussion paper is remarkably candid about widespread public distrust of Brussels, stating for example that “citizens’ trust in the EU has decreased in line with that for national authorities. Around a third of citizens trust the EU today, when about half of Europeans did so ten years ago.” Overcoming this trust issue will not be easy, the white paper states: “Communities are not always aware that their farm nearby, their transport network or universities are partly funded by the EU.”

At its heart, the white paper emphasises managing expectations as being critical for future success. Where the Commission builds up expectations for economic growth and cross-border harmony driven from Brussels, it makes itself vulnerable to attack. When suggesting faster and stronger integration as one option (the fifth and final), the Commission notes ‘there is the risk of alienating parts of society which feel that the EU lacks legitimacy or has taken too much power away from national authorities’. But at the other extreme, it makes clear that going back to the single market alone is not a good (second) option. Moreover, its first option, going along pretty much as it currently does, although presented very positively, is equally a non-starter, given the difficulties of reaching agreements under the current unanimity rules.

Therefore, the more nuanced approaches the Commission itself seems to favour involving ‘differentiated integration’ – contained in especially the third but also the fourth options – would be preferable. This could involve, on the one hand, some member states deepening cooperation in core policy areas while others stay on the sidelines, at least initially. Or it could mean the Union focusing on what it does well and trying to do it better, while returning other competences back to the member states.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

The appeal of pragmatism

Differentiated Integration at this point may be an attractive and viable option to the Commission, given that deeper integration seems to have hit a brick wall over the past five years as a result of member-state divisions over how to respond to the EU’s ‘polycrisis’. It may be the easiest way to implement a solution as well. Allowing strongly pro-European states to integrate further where possible makes good sense, in particular since different member-states may prefer to integrate more (or less) in different areas.

One significant omission from the white paper is how such differentiated integration would work within existing institutional arrangements. The original reason for harmonising policies at the EU level was to introduce clearer accountability and transparency through consistent and clear decision making routes. Allowing member states to pick and choose could damage core normative commitments to integration and fundamental rights, while at the same time it could also create even more complexity and blurred lines. Moreover, enabling member states to speed up integration in some areas, for example in fiscal policy, while permitting dis-integration in another, such as immigration policy, potentially creates new unforeseen tensions, arguably even worse than those which exist at the moment.

So how does the EU ensure accountability and transparency in a multi-speed Europe? The Commission does not address this issue, despite its statement of concern. Accountability and transparency require clear and consistent procedures with an obvious centre of authority to ensure accountability, or at least a clear ‘paper trail’ regarding who made what decision, when and with what advice.

This is an issue the EU already struggles with. As some academics describe it, the EU faces an ‘accountability overload’ of reporting and paperwork, not to mention its lack of transparency or its democratic deficit. To deal with these questions, it is also important to make certain that all member-states are sitting around the table, with a voice if not always a vote, as new policy initiatives are considered. But even this is not enough.

The need for openness and inclusion

To address the problems of accountability as well as transparency, the EU needs to find ways to devise more inclusive and open processes of public engagement at the European level, providing clear links into the policy making process. In many respects, the EU is actually considered a normal and unproblematic part of people’s lives across Europe. Common standards in food, medicines, aviation safety and other areas of EU responsibility are largely supported by all relevant members of the public. The key, as the Commission itself in some ways notices, is to make a connection in terms of identity at the local level, and to provide better and clearer channels of engagement from national parliaments and local civil society.

Anyone who’s been to Brussels will tell you it is a ‘bubble’, perhaps even more so than national capitals often are. Corporate lobbyists and NGOs abound, and ‘the public’ are left out of the equation. Paradoxically, there are various ways the public can contribute in principle to EU legislation via online public consultations at various stages. Yet, these processes are already obscure and monopolised by lobbyists – the ‘expert stakeholders’ EU bodies like to talk about.

In some ways then, EU institutions are more transparent and accountable than their national counterparts. Yet, there are few channels through which these institutions speak to the public. The European Citizens’ Initiative, launched in 2012, is barely known across the continent and needs at least 1 million people to sign a petition for anything useful to happen. Where there have been successful Initiatives, these have been monopolised by lobbyists and NGOs.

The way to legitimacy

We recently interviewed a Dutch MEP who said that “the Commission works very well, the experts work well. But where are the public?” His off-the-cuff solution was to have the Parliament take Committees and MEPs out of Brussels and spend most of their time in local communities engaging with the public and learning about their issues and opinions. This could be facilitated through national parliaments and promoted by political parties. All very idealistic, and given recent populist developments we might be sceptical about its viability. But inclusion and openness have to start somewhere.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

For decades, academics and EU politicians assumed the ‘outputs’ the Union provides – economic stability and social harmony – would be enough to secure ‘ever greater Union’. They have been proved wrong, but the solution is not to reinforce the very obscurity and complexity that fuel distrust in Brussels in the first place. While a good start, the Commission’s suggestion of more ‘differentiation’ could exacerbate rather than close the ‘expectations gap’ so long as it does not find ways to ensure greater accountability and transparency. The EU needs to find ways to be more democratic – open and inclusive – so as to allow the European public genuine participation in the process of EU decision making, as it progresses through the Commission, Parliament and Council. Internal political reform is remarkable for its absence in the white paper, but it will be crucial in any strategy to renew trust in the Union.

This post originally appeared on the European Politics and Policy (LSE) blog.

Vivien Schmidt and Matt Wood

Vivien Schmidt is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Boston University, and Founding Director of Boston University’s Center for the Study of Europe. Matt Wood is a Lecturer and Deputy Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics at the University of Sheffield. His is an ESRC Future Research Leaders Fellow, focusing on stakeholder engagement and legitimacy in the EU.

You are here: Home / Politics / New White Paper Underlines Why Europe Needs To Be More Open

Most Popular Posts

Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic
Orbán,Hungary,Russia,Putin,sanctions,European Union,EU,European Parliament,commission,funds,funding Time to confront Europe’s rogue state—HungaryStephen Pogány

Most Recent Posts

reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl
Jacinda Ardern,women,leadership,New Zealand What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls timePeter Davis

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube