Birmingham 2004

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UACES 34th Annual Conference and 9th Research Conference
The European Union: New Neighbours, New Challenges

The University of Birmingham, Monday 6th – Wednesday 8th September 2004

Research Paper Abstracts T-Z

Abstracts for the research papers to be presented at the conference can be found below. The conference also includes Plenary sessions with invited speakers. The abstracts on this page are in alphabetical order by surname.

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Timmins

Timmins, Graham (University of Stirling, graham.timmins@stir.ac.uk)
Membership by Other Means? The European Union and Russia
This paper will consider the interaction of the EU with Russia in light of recent developments and the EU New Neighbourhood Policy. Despite Russia’s stated disinterest in EU membership, there exists a rhetoric of strategic partnership which suggests a mutual desire on the part of both Russia and the EU to develop a closer relationship. The key question being asked here is whether the EU and Russia are developing a relationship which, to use the phrase employed in the New Neighbourhood Policy, could be interpreted as ‘sharing everything but institutions’. Such a situation assumes that both Russia and the West perceive tangible benefits from a closer relationship and are looking to construct a more credible basis to the rhetoric of strategic partnership. The paper is based on extensive use of primary and secondary source materials backed up by interviews with EU officials.

Vaughan-Whitehead | Virén | Vinhas de Souza | Vos

Vaughan-Whitehead, Daniel (International Labour Office, Switzerland, vaughan-whitehead@ilo.org)
What Working Conditions in EU-25?
While conditions of work and employment have been progressively reinforced in the European Union, the new EU member states have also committed themselves to reach the same standards along their accession.
Nevertheless, recent studies have revealed that important gaps still exist between the new EU members and the EU-15. The gap may widen, with enterprises –notably the new private small and medium enterprises– of new EU member states from Central and Eastern Europe having more and more recourse to atypical forms of work and employment –such as self-employment– while their employees also cumulate longer weekly working hours, and face poorer health and safety conditions at work place. Such gaps may have socio-economic implications, notably on future conditions of work and employment in an enlarged EU, and also in neighbourhood countries.
The aim of this paper is to identify changing patterns in conditions of work and employment at enterprise level –in terms of wages, working time, working conditions, employment contracts, social dialogue– in what combination are they introduced, what tradeoffs do seem to emerge at enterprise level and what are the consequences on individual workers and social cohesion in general. On this basis, a first assessment of working and employment conditions in the EU-25 can be provided.

Vos, Hendrik (Ghent University, Belgium, hendrik.vos@ugent.be)
Regional Parliaments and EU Decision-Making
Enhancing democratic legitimacy in the multilevel European polity is an important challenge. In our traditional view on democracy ‘parliaments’ contribute towards the legitimacy of political projects. In this regard, the European Parliament has a crucial part to play.
The Laeken Declaration states that other parliaments have an important role as well. The same Declaration stresses the importance of the subnational level. It is sometimes said that legislative regions, by their closeness to the citizens, could contribute to the democratization process. MLG-literature is looking closely into the channels by which subnational governments actually (try to) influence EU decision-making. Surprisingly, little attention is paid to the role of regional parliaments.
This paper explores the role regional parliaments actually (could) play in the EU decision-making process. We do make a difference between various types of decisions: history-making decisions, legislative decisions, the prelegislative story and the execution (implementation) of decisions. The regional parliament of Flanders, which hosted the CALRE (Conference of the Assemblies of Legislative Regions in Europe) in 2002, is taken as an example. This contribution also makes an evaluation of the proposals in the Draft Constitution on strengthening the influence of national parliaments and looks at the effects on regional parliaments.
It will be argued that even without major treaty modifications, regional parliaments could enhance their role in the EU decision-making.

Wolczuk | Wright | Wunderlich

Wolczuk, Kataryna (University of Birmingham, k.wolczuk@bham.ac.uk)
Ukraine and its Policy towards the EU
The paper examines the sources of Ukraine's policy towards the EU. Since late 1990s Ukraine has indicated its willingness to
participate in European integration by declaring the intention of joining the European Union. Yet its foreign policy declarations have not been matched by the necessary acceleration in democratisation and economic reforms in the domestic context as has been the case in East-Central European states. The paper aims to explore firstly why Ukraine's European aspirations have remained limited to declarations, and, secondly, the conditions under which a shift from declarative to deep Europeanisation in post-Soviet non-EU countries might occur by drawing insights from the literature on the EU's eastern enlargement against the backdrop of the European Neighbourhood Policy.

Wright, Sharon (University of Stirling, sharon.wright@stir.ac.uk)
[Joint paper with Anja Kopač, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and Gary Slater, Nottingham Trent University]
Continuities Within Paradigmatic Change: Activation, Social Policies and Citizenship in the Context of Welfare Reform in Slovenia and the UK
In this paper, we examine the inception and development of activation in Slovenia and the UK in order to identify the rationales for its introduction, to plot the direction of reforms and to consider the outcomes of policy implementation for citizens. In this unconventional country comparison, we are interested in understanding third order (Hall 1993) welfare state change as the context for the introduction of activation. The UK and, to a much greater extent, Slovenia, underwent paradigmatic changes in the goals of the economy, structure of the labour market and basis of social provisions in the late twentieth century. This provided the possibility for activation to develop a more distinct character and to be implemented to a greater extent than in other European countries. However, we argue that the nature of the activation strategies pursued in Slovenia and the UK have both retained strong flavours of their earlier policy traditions and point to the role of political institutions and arrangements in adjusting the demands of supranational organisations, particularly in the corporatist Slovenian case.

Wunderlich, Uwe (University of Reading, j.wunderlich@rdg.ac.uk)
Conceptualisng the European Union: A New Regionalism Approach
To transcend the dilemma represented by the dichotomy of supranational and state-centric paradigms is perhaps the greatest challenge in establishing definitional clarity on the European Union (EU).
The proposed paper suggests using the new regionalism approach as a theoretical framework to conceptualise the EU as a region by focusing on its ‘presence’ at the international level. Regions have been commonly defined as groups of countries characterised by high levels of interdependencies in a variety of areas. When it comes to the EU in the international arena, research seems to be focused on actor capabilities. From this, however, a variety of methodological problems arise. The paper aims to side step these problems and transcend the inherent fixation of state-centrism by applying the concept of a region as introduced by the new regionalism approach. It develops the argument that the EU can be regarded as a regional entity, which has been constructed by external and internal perceptions as a political and social structure and, therefore, pays particular attention to the role of cognitive and ideational factors in the formation of a region.
In two main sections, the paper offers a comprehensive discussion of European identity by focusing on external and internal identity features. The advantage of such a methodology lies in the possibility of applying the same approach for the analysis of other regional organisations such as, for instance, ASEAN and brings us a step closer to developing a satisfactory theory of comparative regionalism.

Yoon

Yoon, Sungwook (University of Bristol, s.w.yoon@bristol.ac.uk)
The EU’s Policy of the Euro Towards East Asia: Does East Asia Matter for the Euro?
The main purpose of this paper is to characterise the EU’s external policy of the euro towards East Asia. The impact of the euro on East Asia so far has been marginal, despite this region’s importance for the internationalisation of the single currency. Empirical research has revealed that one of the main reason’s for this lies in the EU’s own Euro policy. This paper will firstly highlight this situation, in order to then explore whether the governance and policy of the euro towards East Asia affects decisions on foreign currency use in East Asia. We will also examine whether the EU has an effective policy toward East Asia in pursuit of advancing the international role of the euro, which will also affect demand for the euro in East Asia. The research will be conducted on the basis of the results obtained from empirical data from interviews with policy-makers at the ECB and European Commission, and official documentation and professional secondary sources.

Zentai

Zentai, Violetta (Central European University, Hungary, vzentai@osi.hu)
[Joint paper with Andrea Krizsan, Central European University, Hungary]
Gender Politics in Hungary on the Road to an Enlarged Europe
The aim of this paper is to illustrate some of the conceptual and implementation issues of the gender mainstreaming strategy as those are reflected in the Hungarian case. Following an overview of the Hungarian context in terms of presence of the gender mainstreaming approach (first part of the paper), the paper analyzes the Hungarian political framing of the gender equality problems in three important fields: domestic violence, family policy and political representation.
Throughout the accession process the European Union had only marginal effect on Hungary in terms of gender equality policy. This effect was mainly visible in the harmonization of de jure formal legal requirements of gender equality forming part of the EU acquis. De facto gender equality did not constitute a bargaining issue throughout the accession process.
The Hungarian policy debates on gender equality are shaping up through a slow process since the change of political regime in 1989. These debates are informed, on the one hand, by equal opportunity policy concepts primarily understood as a distinctive policy field targeting gender equality and implemented through specific women’s policies (in the spirit of Beijing). On the other hand the promotion of equal opportunity on all grounds became a powerful policy approach in the last 2-3 years often neglecting the specific requirements of gender equality. The concept of gender mainstreaming as a cross-sectoral and comprehensive policy tool has arrived parallel to this development and started to come up in policy talks and documents in a somewhat haphazard way since 1996. Its presence can be seen as at most rhetorical. Meanwhile slow progress in terms of gender equality takes place in some policy sectors such as domestic violence, family policy or anti-discrimination policy. However in the absence of coordinated action and a strategy informing it, such progress is incidental and the framing of gender equality resulting from it is variable. A common trend that can be noticed in most examined sectors is the emphasis on equal opportunity and social inclusion on all grounds rather than emphasis on the specific requirements of equal opportunity on grounds of gender equality.
We argue that close to the end of the EU accession process despite the fragmented and slow improvement process Hungary has not yet developed a comprehensive, coordinated policy strategy targeting the promotion of gender equality.