Month: January 2016

The quest for a solution to the European financial crisis has produced divisions inside the European Parliament. Nonetheless, Mícheál O’Keeffe, Marion Salines and Marta Wieczorek show that internal divisions did not shape the EP’s external negotiation strategy in trilogues with the European Commission and the Council. Their article “The European Parliament’s strategy in EU economic and financial reform” published in the Journal of European Public Policy illustrates that the EP opted for similar bargaining tactics when it stands united (financial supervision) and when it is divided, as in the case of economic governance reforms. In both instances, parliamentarians placed a premium on legitimacy and transparency concerns with regard to the EU’s response to the crisis.

Commission consultations with NGOs link European policy-makers with civil society and represent an essential feature of participatory democracy in the EU. Analysing NGOs’ lobbying strategies on environmental policy in the EU, Wiebke Marie Junk argues that public consultations “may enhance the ‘participatory’, but not necessarily the ‘democratic’, nature of ‘participatory democracy’ in the EU”. To find out more read her article “Two logics of NGO advocacy: understanding inside and outside lobbying on EU environmental policies” published in the Journal of European Public Policy.

If you are a savvy traveller in Europe, you have probably come across the European Health Insurance Card, which grants European residents free access to a number of healthcare services in any EU member state. Yet, healthcare policies continue to be mainly a national prerogative. Hans Vollaard, Hester van de Bovenkamp and Dorte Sindbjerg Martinsen show, nevertheless, that the EU has become increasingly involved in the public health decisions of its member states. Read their article “The making of a European healthcare union: a federalist perspective” published in the Journal of European Public Policy to learn more about how a co-operative federative system is shaping the provision of healthcare in the EU.

Independent scientific advice is highly valued by the Commission in preparing regulatory decisions. At the same time, there is broad agreement that risk assessment is rarely value free and hence requires involvement from private and public interest groups. In “Policy masquerading as science: an examination of non-state actor involvement in European risk assessment policy for genetically modified animals” published in the Journal of European Public Policy, Sarah Hartley shows how the European Food Safety Authority together with the Commission eschewed the input provided by non-scientists and public stakeholders in preparing its policy decisions: “This study joins a growing number of cases suggesting experts move beyond influencing policy to actually making policy.”

To comply with the demands of EU accession, new member states see themselves compelled to revamp their constitutions, which often implies far-reaching constitutional changes. But political elites choose different strategies of constitutional change. According to Christer Karlsson, reformers can alter the explicit wording of their constitution or its implicit meaning. Their choice of strategy is not only shaped by the rigidity of constitutional amendment procedures and the number of governing parties that need to be brought on board, but also by how politicized the issue at stake actually is. Read the full story in his article “Explaining constitutional change: making sense of cross-national variation among European Union member states”, published in the Journal of European Public Policy.