Shaping Europe

France and Germany have played a pivotal role in European politics and integration. Shaping Europe systematically investigates the interrelated reality of Franco-German bilateralism and multilateral European integration from the Elysée Treaty into the Twenty-first Century.

Recent decades have seen a rise in the significance of governance layers beyond the nation state and even Europe. Nonetheless, few efforts have been made thus far to systematically examine the EU’s interaction with global policy regimes. This book maps the relative importance of EU policies in the multi-level global governance system, in comparison with national and global activities. It provides a unique comparative analysis of the EU’s capacity for projecting its policies outward. Focusing on trade policy, agriculture, food safety, competition, social rights, environmental policy, transport, migration, nuclear non-proliferation, or financial regulation, each chapter contributes to a better understanding of the EU’s role in shaping global policies, the mechanisms it uses and the conditions leading to success or failure. The contributors’ comparative research highlights that policy export is a demanding phenomenon that faces severe limitations and frequently comes with drawbacks. Still, EU policy export played a key role in shaping the rules of the global trade regime and influenced global policy outcomes – at least to a minor extent or in technical aspects – in the majority of the covered policy areas. Overall however, this book reveals that the EU not only aims to export its policies, but interacts with its global environment in a number of distinct ways, including policy import and policy protection, to shield it from global pressures. Concluding with a comparison of all policies on the meta-level and relevant policy recommendations, this book will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners of European politics, European public policy, global governance and international relations.

For many observers, the European Union is mired in a deep crisis. Between sluggish growth; political turmoil following a decade of austerity politics; Brexit; and the rise of Asian influence, the EU is seen as a declining power on the world stage. Columbia Law professor Anu Bradford argues the opposite in her important new book The Brussels Effect: the EU remains an influential superpower that shapes the world in its image. By promulgating regulations that shape the international business environment, elevating standards worldwide, and leading to a notable Europeanization of many important aspects of global commerce, the EU has managed to shape policy in areas such as data privacy, consumer health and safety, environmental protection, antitrust, and online hate speech. And in contrast to how superpowers wield their global influence, the Brussels Effect - a phrase first coined by Bradford in 2012- absolves the EU from playing a direct role in imposing standards, as market forces alone are often sufficient as multinational companies voluntarily extend the EU rule to govern their global operations. The Brussels Effect shows how the EU has acquired such power, why multinational companies use EU standards as global standards, and why the EU's role as the world's regulator is likely to outlive its gradual economic decline, extending the EU's influence long into the future.

The European Union undoubtedly plays an important role in the formation of international law. This takes place through a number of avenues ranging from the simple existence of this supranational legal order within the sphere of international law to the actual influencing of international legal order. With contributions by leading scholars, this collection of essays constructs and analyses a new and stimulating approach in which the European Union is perceived as an active co-creator of the international legal order on a variety of planes. Providing concrete examples of the European Union's approach to the international legal order in different policy fields, this book will be a key reference point for a new active paradigm of EU external relations law.

France and Germany have played a pivotal role in the history and politics of European integration. Yet, paradoxically, a study that systematically investigates the interrelated reality of Franco-German bilateralism and multilateral European integration has been conspicuously lacking. Formulating an approach the authors call "embedded bilateralism", this book offers exactly that. It scrutinizes in empirical and historical detail the bilateral Franco-German order and France and Germany's joint role in shaping Europe over the past half century. The book addresses two key questions regarding France and Germany in Europe from the Elysée Treaty to the twenty-first century: Why have France and Germany continued to hang together in an especially tight relationship for over five decades amidst frequently dramatic domestic change, lasting differences, and fundamental international transformation? And why has the joint Franco-German impact on shaping Europe's polity and European policies, while fundamental, proved so uneven across political domains and time? In answer to the first question, Shaping Europe argues that the actions and practices of the Franco-German order-its regularized bilateral intergovernmentalism, symbolic acts and practices, and parapublic underpinnings-together have rendered this bilateral connection historically resilient and politically adaptable. Regarding the second question, the book holds that different combinations of a limited number of factors located at the bilateral, domestic, regional European, and international levels explain central aspects of variation. Together, these factors condition and modulate France and Germany's joint impact on Europe. In pursuing its research questions, theoretical work, historical reconstructions, and empirical analyses, Shaping Europe fruitfully combines the study of European integration, EU politics and policymaking, Franco-German affairs, and French and German politics with general theorizing and conceptual grounding in international relations and political science.

The legal foundation of the contemporary European security order is the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). Negotiated by NATO and the Warsaw Pact states as the Cold War was ending and implemented as the new Europe took shape, the CFE Treaty imposes strict limits on the armed forces of all the major European states. This book takes a detailed look at the origins and evolution of the CFE negotiations and the impact of the CFE Treaty on European Security. It draws extensively on interviews with participants in the CFE negotiations and offers a careful reconstruction of a process that contributed to the transformation of Cold War Europe, a critical assessment of the treaty's contribution to security in post-Cold War Europe, and an evaluation of the lessons of CFE for future conventional arms control initiatives. CSIA Studies in International Security, No. 6

This book analyses nearly 100 original interviews with Members of the European Parliament from across the European Union who were active between 1979 and 2019. These interviews, preserved in the Historical Archives of the European Union at the European University Institute, capture the memories of the MEPs about their own roles and their assessment of what the parliament achieved in developing a European parliamentary democracy in the forty years following the first direct elections. The book offers a taste of the interviews in ten chapters, each of which corresponds to a specific theme presented in the archive: choosing the parliament, working inside the parliament machine, living inside the political groups, playing a part in major moments, influencing and shaping policy, scrutinizing and holding to account, making a mark beyond the EU, communicating the work of the parliament, keeping in touch with national societies, and looking to the future.