This paper looks into the increased capacities, tasks and competences of Frontex (the European Border and Coast Guard Agency), brought about by the 2016 legislative reform. We examine whether this... Show moreThis paper looks into the increased capacities, tasks and competences of Frontex (the European Border and Coast Guard Agency), brought about by the 2016 legislative reform. We examine whether this development was accompanied by an accountability regime of equal strength. The existing accountability mechanisms are measured against the standards of European Union (EU) primary and secondary law. The paper assesses the political, administrative, professional and social accountability of Frontex, including parliamentary oversight and the newly introduced individual complaints mechanism. The final part of the paper focuses on legal accountability, a strong, yet highly complex, form of accountability. There, we introduce the concept of systemic accountability and investigate possible courses of legal action against Frontex. In sum, Frontex is subject to moderately increased scrutiny under its renewed founding Regulation and to various EU accountability mechanisms of general application. But several procedural and practical hurdles could render legal accountability difficult to achieve in practice. Show less
In less unusual times, the European Union’s Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy would have been received as merely the latest iteration of the main tenets and ambitions of EU external... Show moreIn less unusual times, the European Union’s Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy would have been received as merely the latest iteration of the main tenets and ambitions of EU external action – this time with an enhanced dose of pragmatism to respond to a more challenging international environment. However, with ‘Brexit’ looming large and one and a half years into the Trump Presidency in the United States, the Global Strategy has acquired a new level of significance. This article argues that while meant to express a largely uncontroversial ‘Western’ consensus, it now needs to be re-contextualized as a distinctive vision in the face of trends of antiglobalism and Euroscepticism. This concerns in particular the Strategy’s emphasis on rules-based global governance. Challenged by both President Trump’s ‘America First’ policy and the British government’s course for a ‘hard Brexit’, the Global Strategy now represents a contested blueprint and rallying point for a continued pursuit of a liberal world order based on the rule of law. Show less
Wonka, A.; De Bruycker, I.; De Bievre, D.; Beyers, J.; Braun, C. 2018
Contemporary studies on interest group politics have mainly used single interest organizations as their central objects of study. This has led to a rich body of knowledge on the motivations of... Show moreContemporary studies on interest group politics have mainly used single interest organizations as their central objects of study. This has led to a rich body of knowledge on the motivations of interest group mobilization, strategy development and even policy access and influence. The focus on single interest groups, however, has resulted in limited knowledge on aggregate patterns of interest groups’ activity. This article seeks to address this lacuna, by examining patterns of mobilization and conflict of interest groups’ activity in EU legislative policymaking. To do so, it adopts a unique policy-centred research design and an empirical assessment of policy mobilization for a sample of 125 EU legislative proposals based on extensive media coding as well as structured elite interviews. We find that levels of policy mobilization vary substantively across different legislative proposals and that political conflict between interest groups is remarkably low. This suggests that interest group conflict and mobilization contribute little to EU politicization and that in cases where interest groups voice opposing positions, conflicts do not occur between business and non-business groups. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of interest groups in EU legislative policymaking. Show less
One of the most important determinants of the European Union’s role in international affairs is the community’ own definition of the border between states eligible for membership and states that... Show moreOne of the most important determinants of the European Union’s role in international affairs is the community’ own definition of the border between states eligible for membership and states that are not eligible. Contrary to what one hears in official pronouncements, this definition has been repeatedly contested and changed significantly since the founding of the community. Prior research (Thomas 2017) has established that contestation from domestic and supranational forces within the community has changed the normative definition of the limits of Europe three times since the 1950s. This paper introduces a new database of all fifty EU decisions on membership eligibility of aspirant states from 1957 through 2017, some positive, some negative, and some reversing an earlier decision. It then uses three analytical techniques – cross-tabulation, regression, and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) -- to evaluate the relative contribution of these changing membership norms, as compared to other legal, political and economic factors, to the EU decision-making in these fifty cases. All three methods indicate that membership norms exert a powerful effect on EU decisions that cannot be attributed to other factors. Show less
One of the most important determinants of the European Union’s role in international affairs is the community’ own definition of the border between states eligible for membership and states that... Show moreOne of the most important determinants of the European Union’s role in international affairs is the community’ own definition of the border between states eligible for membership and states that are not eligible. Contrary to what one hears in official pronouncements, this definition has been repeatedly contested and changed significantly since the founding of the community. Prior research (Thomas 2017) has established that contestation from domestic and supranational forces within the community has changed the normative definition of the limits of Europe three times since the 1950s. This paper introduces a new database of all fifty EU decisions on membership eligibility of aspirant states from 1957 through 2017, some positive, some negative, and some reversing an earlier decision. It then uses three analytical techniques – cross-tabulation, regression, and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) -- to evaluate the relative contribution of these changing membership norms, as compared to other legal, political and economic factors, to the EU decision-making in these fifty cases. All three methods indicate that membership norms exert a powerful effect on EU decisions that cannot be attributed to other factors. Show less
Deetman, S.; Oers, L. van; Voet, E. van der; Tukker, A. 2018
