Small States In Eu Policy Making

Small States and EU Governance shows that the EU's rotating Council presidency and small states' capacity to make use of it have been underestimated. It examines the political objectives the presidency serves and presents a systematic and comparative assessment of its nature and influence in internal market and foreign policy issues.

Small States in and outside the European Union offers a broad overview of the small states problematic in Europe. It touches upon definition issues, history, security policy, neutrality, EU institutional aspects and also includes contributors from Central and Eastern European countries. It presents a thorough analysis of different scenarios for EU institutional reform and their repercussions on the influence of small member states. The comparative results are visualized in tables. The work contains several contributions from practitioners who give insight into policy games and issues of national sensitivity not usually covered by purely scholarly publications. The European environment has changed dramatically through the processes of regional integration and rising interdependence. Relations between European states both inside and outside the EU are governed as never before by rules, norms, and fixed procedures. The book investigates the consequences of these developments on the foreign and security policy of small states. Academics and professionals from Austria, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Slovenia, Sweden, and Switzerland, as well as from the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, elaborate on these issues. Institutional regulations and traditional power politics as well as the foreign and security policy traditions of the states concerned, including the question of neutrality, are investigated. In addition, the book identifies the main interests of small states in today's Europe and offers an overview of different strategies these states apply in the realm of foreign and security policy. The book is interesting for the case studies it offers as well as for the reflections it contains regarding fundamental questions of the essence of statehood in today's Europe.

Small States in EU Policy-Making analyses how small states try to impact European Union policy-making through a range of strategies. With the last rounds of enlargement and Brexit, the number and weight of small states in the European Union have steadily increased. At the same time, small states face distinct challenges in different institutions, which may impact their strategies. Nonetheless, the existing literature primarily focuses on the Council of the European Union and the European Council and offers few insights into how small states navigate the other institutions. The contributions to this volume examine how small states can wield influence in different institutions, arguing that they do indeed pursue different strategies depending on institutional context. The policy case studies on the EU's foreign and security policies confirm these findings: small states can have influence in EU policy-making and can create situations where their needs are met. They are most likely to succeed when they build foreign policy coalitions, when they anticipate major economic developments and when they manage to acquire a high level of expertise in a policy area. However, the case studies also show that there is a risk of small states becoming policy-takers in cases where they cannot provide leadership in terms of ideas and expertise and/or fail to build political weight through coalitions. This book will be of interest to academics and practitioners of European politics and the EU in particular, as well as policy-makers and practitioners working on small states. The Open Access version of this book, available at http: //www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The effects of recent institutional change within the European Union on small states have often been overlooked. This book offers an accessible, coherent and informative analysis of contemporary and future foreign policy challenges facing small states in Europe. Leading experts analyze the experiences of a number of small states including the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Luxembourg, Cyprus, Iceland, Austria and Switzerland. Each account, written to a common template, explores the challenges and opportunities faced by each state as a consequence of EU integration, and how their behaviour regarding EU integration has been characterized. In particular, the contributors emphasize the importance of power politics, institutional dynamics and lessons of the past. Innovative and sophisticated, the study draws on the relational understanding of small states to emphasize the implications of institutional change at the European level for the smaller states and to explain how the foreign and European policies of small states in the region are affected by the European Union.

The most recent EU-enlargements have considerably increased the number of small member states. In the EU-27, 19 countries have fewer votes in the Council of Ministers than the EU-average. These small states face a series of size-related disadvantages in day-to-day EU negotiations. Against this backdrop the book asks: are some small states better at coping with structural disadvantages than others? How active are small states in participating in day-to-day EU negotiations and why do some states use negotiation strategies more frequently than others? Under which conditions are the different negotiation strategies effective and when can small states punch above their weight? Based on more than 100 interviews with policy-makers and an analysis of a unique database on the negotiation activities of EU member states, this book explains how active participation is essential for the shaping success of small states and shows that small states are more influential with persuasion-based rather than bargaining-based strategies. Two case studies on the pesticides and the spirit drinks regulations further reveal that persuasion strategies are especially effective if the arguments match the nature of the issue at stake and resonate well with prior beliefs of addressees. No other study comprehensively analyzes small states in a comparative perspective, examines their activity levels in EU negotiations and outlines which conditions are needed for the effectiveness of a broad range of strategies. An indispensable resource for students and researchers interested in how and under which conditions small states can influence policies in negotiations beyond the nation-state.

This book examines a crucial question about small states and their governments’ influence in the European Union (EU) decision-making processes. - Are EU small member state governments influential in EU decision-making processes? In other words, do they exercise influence in these processes? And if so, how and at which stage do they do this? This book seeks to answer the above questions by focusing on Malta - the smallest state in the EU - and whether it exercises influence in ‘uploading’ its preferences in two distinct stages of EU legislative decision-making processes - decision-shaping (formation) and decision-taking (adoption). The cases selected and analyzed showcase the Maltese government’s behaviour in legislative negotiations in differing EU policy spheres that are extremely relevant to it. These are the adoption of EU directives on pyrotechnic articles (falling under the EU competition and consumer health and safety policy spheres) and on the extension of EU long-term residence to beneficiaries of international protection (falling under EU immigration policy). As analyzed in the latter chapters of the book, Malta’s government has achieved varying degrees of success in its exercise of influence in these EU decision-making processes.

Comprehensive and timely, this Handbook identifies the key characteristics, challenges and opportunities involved in the politics of small states across the globe today. Acknowledging the historical legacies behind these states, the chapters unpack the costs and benefits of different political models for small states.

The most recent EU-enlargements have considerably increased the number of small member states. In the EU-27, 19 countries have fewer votes in the Council of Ministers than the EU-average. These small states face a series of size-related disadvantages in day-to-day EU negotiations. Against this backdrop the book asks: are some small states better at coping with structural disadvantages than others? How active are small states in participating in day-to-day EU negotiations and why do some states use negotiation strategies more frequently than others? Under which conditions are the different negotiation strategies effective and when can small states punch above their weight? Based on more than 100 interviews with policy-makers and an analysis of a unique database on the negotiation activities of EU member states, this book explains how active participation is essential for the shaping success of small states and shows that small states are more influential with persuasion-based rather than bargaining-based strategies. Two case studies on the pesticides and the spirit drinks regulations further reveal that persuasion strategies are especially effective if the arguments match the nature of the issue at stake and resonate well with prior beliefs of addressees. No other study comprehensively analyzes small states in a comparative perspective, examines their activity levels in EU negotiations and outlines which conditions are needed for the effectiveness of a broad range of strategies. An indispensable resource for students and researchers interested in how and under which conditions small states can influence policies in negotiations beyond the nation-state.