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UACES 35th Annual Conference and 10th Research Conference
The European Union: Past and Future Enlargements

Research Session 3

UACES reserves the right at all times to make changes to the programme where necessary.

Session 1  |  Session 2  |  Session 3  |  Session 4  |  Session 5  |  Session 6  |  Full Programme

Monday, 5 September (16:15-17:45)

The panels listed in the table below are followed by the abstracts for each of the papers.

Bale, Tim (University of Sussex)
Joint paper with Paul Taggart.
First Time MEPs: Role Orientations and Realities
The EP is more powerful and has more members than ever before. But it seems no nearer to overcoming the disconnect between the EU and its citizens, even though it is the Union's only directly representative institution. This paper focuses on those representatives, and in particular on those who have joined the institution since June 2004. Reporting on a research project based on semi-structured interviews with fifty first time MEPs and the construction of a database on all new members, it reports on their backgrounds, their routes into the parliament, and the roles they seem and hope to take on.  It posits a typology of inductively developed role orientations before concluding with some of the implications of that typology for the study of the EP.

Barnes, Ian (University of Lincoln, ibarnes@lincoln.ac.uk)
Joint paper with Claire Randerson
When Does Conditionality Stop? The Willingness to Keep to the Deal
The 2004 enlargement process was significant both in terms of the size of the event and the way that the EU attempted to shape the economic and political development of the applicant states prior to membership. This process came to an end in a formal sense as the applicant states actually joined in May 2004 when conditionality ceased to be meaningful as an instrument of change. From this point on it was hoped that the new members would become europeanised in the sense that the changes which were agreed would become permanent.
This paper examines the lessons that have emerged as a result of the 2004 enlargement and asks if the process of change was meaningful in all areas. Did constitutional conditionality cease to become meaningful in areas like minority rights well before enlargement? There is some evidence to suggest that perhaps it did. What has been the commitment to technical conditionality with respect to the single market? One year after the enlargement, some evidence is starting to emerge about this issue.  What lessons have been learnt with respect to the next wave of enlargement due to commence in 2007? Clearly the EU’s negotiators will have reflected upon the experience of the last enlargement to inform their negotiating stance.

Baun, Michael (Valdosta State University, USA, mbaun@valdosta.edu)
Joint paper with Dan Marek
Regional Policy and Decentralization in the Czech Republic
As a condition of membership, the Czech Republic and other candidate countries were required to create regionalized administrative systems for the implementation of EU Structural Funds assistance. However, the EU did not impose any sort of uniform template for such regional administration systems, leaving candidate states to decide how to create these in accordance with their own national traditions or political requirements. In the Czech Republic, political resistance to decentralization resulted in the creation of system of regional governments that possessed only limited powers, as well as a fairly centralized system for administering Structural Funds assistance.
Although it has not yet been one year since formal accession, there has now been some experience with the actual implementation of Structural Funds assistance in the Czech Republic, and planning has already begun for regional policy in the next (2007-2013) budgetary period. As a consequence, some longer-term trends may already be appearing that allow us to predict developments in the future. This paper will examine the experience with Structural Funds policy in the Czech Republic since accession, to see if the implementation of this policy has consolidated the centralized administrative system or led to further pressures for decentralization.
The political (decentralizing) impact of EU regional policy in old (pre-2004) member states has been considerably examined in the literature, as has to some extent the impact of EU accession requirements in the area of regional policy on candidate states in the pre-accession period. This paper will add to and build on this literature, by examining the impact of EU regional policy in a new member state, in the initial period after accession as it gains experience with newly-created regional institutions and administrative processes.

Benedetto, Giacomo (University of Manchester)
g.benedetto@lse.ac.uk
Enlargement, Institutional Change, and the Pervasiveness of Consensus in the European Parliament
The path dependence of consensus provides a theoretical explanation for analysing the behaviour of political groups in the European Parliament, given the twin challenges of increased institutional powers and EU Enlargement over the last decade. Analysis of roll call votes, competition for positions of influence inside the Parliament, and executive-legislative relations show that, despite the heterogeneity of the political groups and rational expectations of an increase in party-based competition, Parliament will remain a consensual institution. The paper proposes a framework for testing whether the original conditions establishing consensus will persist and increase in the light of the arrival of 162 MEPs from new member States. Implications concerning consensus-based systems and the effects of rapid institutional change will be drawn from the findings of the eventual research.

Bono, Giovanna (Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium, giovanna.bono@vub.ac.be)
The Parliamentary Accountability Gap in EU-led External Security Engagements: Issues, Visions and Proposals
The paper has two aims: after briefly reviewing the key debates about the parliamentary accountability aspects of EU and UN-led external security engagements, the paper evaluates the potential impact that the adoption of the European Constitution and of the package of reform advanced by the UN panel on Threats, Challenges and Change could have on the practices and democratic accountability aspects of EU-led security engagements. The second aim is to categorise and critically review other proposals for strengthening democratic accountability aspects of EU-led peacekeeping and peace-enforcement operations gathered through a survey that the author has undertaken with leading members of the Defence and Foreign Affairs Committees of the British, French and Italian parliaments and of MEPs.

Brkan, Maja (majabrkan@yahoo.com)
The Jurisdiction of the ECJ in Matters of CFSP in the Light of Constitutional Treaty
The paper aims to examine the question of jurisdiction of the ECJ in matters of CFSP in the light of the Constitutional Treaty (CT). The CFSP is not only strictly delimitated from other EU external policies; it is also exempted from the jurisdiction of the ECJ. According to Article III-376 CT, there are only two areas in which the ECJ is endowed with jurisdiction: first, when the CFSP might affect “the application of the procedures and the extent of powers” for the exercise of Union competences, and second, when the Court “reviews the legality of European decisions providing for restrictive measures against natural or legal persons”. The paper tries to establish whether this is an introduction of a “political questions” doctrine (originally pertaining to the US judiciary) in the EU legal order and what are the arguments for and against the jurisdiction of the ECJ in CFSP matters.

Capeta, Tamara (University of Zagreb, tamara@irmo.hr)
Preliminary References from New Member States in the First Year of Membership
The aim of this paper is to look into the preliminary references submitted by the courts of the 2004 enlargement Member States, in order to find out which national courts were refering, which kind of questions were they mostly asking, and to find out in which way the questions were refered by national judges. This research should confirm (or not) my assertion in previous paper that legal culture of new ex-communist Member States still differs from the predominant legal culture in the EU and its ‘old’ Member States. Its second aim is to learn whether and how the experience of early membership may be used in the preparation of Croatian judges for the accession in the EU. The research will be conducted on the basis of the web accessible data about the references (as published in the OJ C), on the information received directly from the new Member States, as well as on the information to be gathered during the planned short stay at the European Court of Justice.

Edwards, Sobrina (University of Sussex, sre22@sussex.ac.uk)
Explaining Enlargement: Identity, Space and Governance
The Enlargement that occurred in May 2004 saw the official EUropean space enlarge to encompass the countries of east and central Europe as well as the Mediterranean countries of Malta and Cyprus. It is the communication of this event that is the focus of this paper. Concentrating upon the 'public' publications of the European institutions of the Parliament and Commission, it asks how, in attempts to explain Enlargement to the EUropean public constructions of European space and identity were linked to ideas about the nature and purpose of the EUropean project. It will be argued that, in 'explaining' Enlargement, particular constructions and narratives of European space and place were combined with those of European governance to legitimise both the rationale of enlargement and more fundamentally, the process of European integration itself. This paper will draw upon a discourse analysis approach.

Fidermuc Maler, Zrinka (Universität Gießen, Germany, zrinkakatarina@web.de)
Croatian European Policy: On the Road to the Full EU-Membership
In this article the author raises the following question: What has Croatia done since it has gained sovereignty in order to build up closer ties to the EC/EU and to join the Union in the second enlargement round planned for 2007?
From the theoretical point of view there are three approaches most suitable for the analysis of Croatian European policy: the action-reaction approach based on behaviourism, the decision-making approach and the structural approach. These approaches are valid for both the evolutionary and systematic perspective.
The whole development of Croatian European policy can be analysed only by implementing and combining those three theoretical approaches to foreign policy. That being said the author proceeds from the following assumption: Since the international recognition the Croatian foreign policy explored the possibilities of approaching to and finally joining the EC/EU. During both phases of political development in Croatia (the „Tuđman era“ in the 1990s; Mesić/Račan, Mesić/Sanader after 2000) many different and competing ideas, styles, as well as a different emphasis on the formulating and implementing Croatian European policy made the progress difficult and slow.
Presented paper scrutinizes among others the academic literature on Croatian foreign and European policy. Many authors have already exploited the goal-mean-approach to define its goals and strategies in the past and have omitted a systematic research of the factors important for further development of that policy. That missing point will be the primary research topic of this paper, providing institutional foundations for the Croatian EU-policy, foreign inputs and influences on that policy as well as analysis of the structures and actors in Croatian governmental decision making process regarding the relations to the EC/EU. The interviews conducted with outstanding political decision makers (former foreign and European ministers, prime ministers, former representatives in the EG/EU, political advisers to the president) displayed unknown processes, decisions and structures and provided an insight into the “grey literature”.

Flood, Chris (University of Surrey, c.flood@surrey.ac.uk)
Joint paper with Simon Usherwood
A Developing Model of Partisan Alignment on EU Integration
There is an increasingly extensive literature on the party politics of Euroscepticism, considered either in comparative perspective or in relation to single states. There is also a literature which approaches the dynamics of party positioning in a broader perspective, considering support for EU integration as well as opposition. These studies provide important analytical frames but this paper argues the value of a ‘thicker’, more qualitative approach. The literature on Euroscepticism tends to isolate the phenomenon of opposition from that of support, although most parties described as Eurosceptical do not have simple positions but complex mixtures including elements of support for aspects of integration. The literature on broader alignments avoids the latter pitfall but uses highly reductive models of positions, transitions and ideological dispositions. Both sets of literature largely exclude consideration of intra-party factions, pressure groups and think-tanks. Building on earlier, preliminary work, the paper further develops a model offering closer, qualitative analysis of the ideo­logical dimension; closer attention to varying organizational forms and channels of opposition or support; more precise identification of opportunity structures; a sophisticated, but economical typology of positions at the output end; and a framework for conceptualising the interaction between the ideological and the institutional factors leading to consistency or change in group positions over time.

Galbreath, David (University of Aberdeen, d.galbreath@abdn.ac.uk)
EU Enlargement and the Minority Rights Regime: Value transfer in Central and Eastern Europe
The latest round of EU enlargement focused on the issue of minority rights unlike any earlier enlargement. This concentration on minority rights illustrates the post-Cold War establishment of a minority rights regime in Europe. I argue that the key actors in this regime are the European Commission, the OSCE High Commissioner on the Protection of National Minorities, and the Council of Europe’s Congress on Local and Regional Authorities. Adopting Tsebelis’s concept, this essay argues that these key actors were the ‘veto players’ in EU enlargement. In this essay, I will engage with several questions. Firstly, how has the issue of minority rights changed in Europe since the end of the Cold War? Second, in this context, what do we mean by regime and in what form does this take? Third, in what way was political conditionality implemented in prospective member-states? In particular, was there a value transfer whereby policy-makers ‘adopted’ views of multiculturalism and minority protection or did these states play the part of rational decision-makers, only doing enough to make it past the ‘veto players’? Finally, how is this process being used in the prelude of the next round of enlargement where the issue of minorities remains an important factor? I will rely on documents and interviews for the empirical elements of the essay.

Goumenos, Thomas  (Panteion University of Athens, Greece, goumenos@hotmail.com)
Greek Perception of the Balkans: Edgy Coexistence or Difficult Relationship?
In the dominant Greek narrative, the Balkans has remained an ambiguous term for identification. On the one hand, large segments of the population have been ready to acknowledge Greece’s belonging to the Balkans and recognise certain cultural affinities with at least some of the other Balkan people. On the other, the political connotations of the term “Balkans” – i.e. its suggestion of the “backward” past of Greece and the institutional Other to the “West” – implicates the requirement for economic and political development in which the country has tended to lag behind. Moreover, the history of confrontations with other states of the region has impeded the acceptance of a common Balkan identity in Greece. This paper investigates how the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s have influenced the Greek perception of the Balkans and the Greek identity, per se. The first suggestion is that these conflicts, and especially the one in Kosovo with the subsequent NATO intervention, have strengthened the negative (non-western and non-Balkan) and particularistic aspects of Greek self-identification. The second suggestion is that there has been established an inconvenient ideological accommodation of the apparent discrepancy between the official policies of the Greek governments in relation to the Balkan conflicts as a member-state of NATO and the EU, and the dominant views of the Greek public. Thence, the paper contributes to the discussion of another “external” perception of the Balkans, from the point of view of a country whose own identity is in limbo between belonging and exclusion from the region.

Gray, Emily (University of Leeds, e.gray@leeds.ac.uk)
Joint paper with Juan Diez Medrano
How Political Actors Frame European Integration in the Public Sphere: A Cross-National and Cross-Actor Comparison
With the European project currently in crisis following the No votes to the EU Constitution in France and the Netherlands, it is a crucial time to examine the terms in which actors in European states have publicly opposed or supported European integration, a topic into which little systematic empirical research has been conducted.  Our focus is on the ‘frames’ that collective actors in seven European countries have publicly invoked to justify their positions for or against European integration, important since past studies show that the ways in which ordinary citizens reason about and take positions on issues such as European integration are significantly shaped by debates in the public sphere.
We use two original cross-national datasets – 1) political claims made by collective actors in the mass media, and 2) media claims made in newspaper editorials - to analyse the dominant clusters of frames (e.g., sovereignty, economy, national identity) promoted by state, civil society and media actors in public debates about Europe.  This enables us to present findings regarding the framing of European integration by these actor types in seven countries (D, F, UK, ES, IT, NL, CH), and consider their implications for the present malaise of public communication about Europe.

Hoffmann, Lars (University of Oxford, lars.hoffmann@sant.ox.ac.uk)
Making Europe Less Democratic: The New Permanent President of the European Council
The debate about whether the European Council needs a permanent president was one of the most voracious of the Convention on the Future of Europe. Intergovernmentalists saw is as a way to better co-ordinate the European Council’s work by making it more consistent and efficient. Federalists saw it as a threat to the leading role of the Commission president in terms of rights of legislative initiatives. However, what would the introduction of a permanent president of the European Council do with regards to the initial merit of the Convention – making the Union more transparent, accountable and democratic?
The aim of this paper is to assess the consequence of permanent President of the European Council on the EU’s institutional framework. The paper argues that the Presidency does not decrease the EU’s democratic deficit and in fact strengthens the Council at the expense of the other European institutions. It therefore further strengthens the position of the member states in their role of determining the future path of integration by making them effectively less accountable in their doings at the European level vis-à-vis their electorates. So the new permanent president of the European Council strengthens national executives, threatens the inter-institutional balance so pivotal to the European governance and does nothing to decrease the EU’s democratic deficit.

Holmes, Michael (Liverpool Hope University College, holmesm@hope.ac.uk)
Europeanisation and Political Parties: Developing an Understanding of the European-National Political Domains
This paper seeks to contribute to two developing strands of analysis in relation to the EU – on Europeanisation, and on the role of the political parties. The paper seeks to develop an understanding of the parameters of Europeanisation when applied to political parties, and will challenge some of the existing approaches. It does so in two ways. First, it suggests that not enough attention has been paid to the significance of whether a party is pro- or anti-EU in terms of its degree of Europeanisation. Second, it argues that analyses to date have not paid adequate consideration to one important feature of the Europeanisation of parties – the extent to which they are beginning to alter national political structures and systems in the light of their European policies and experiences. The paper is based on a case-study analysis of the Irish Labour Party.

Holtom, Paul (University of Glamorgan, pd_holtom@yahoo.co.uk)
Illicit Arms Trafficking in the Baltic States
This paper will focus upon the alignment of the Baltic States with EU initiatives relating to controlling legal, and combating illegal, transfers of weaponry and other sensitive goods.  After briefly commenting upon the challenges posed by the illicit arms trade in the post-Cold War era, a summary of the EU’s main efforts to harmonise export control legislation and co-ordinate responses to the illicit arms trade at the regional level will be discussed.  This will be followed by a consideration of the EU’s assessments of the Baltic States’ support for EU-led initiatives in this sphere and their export controls for weaponry and sensitive goods. As the Baltic States change from ‘gateways’ to EU ‘gatekeepers’, they may struggle to meet the demands of Schengen EU unless they can overcome a number of challenges, ranging from problems with inter-agency and transnational communication, co-operation and information exchanges to lack of resources, corruption, and containerised security threats.  The particular challenges posed by the Kaliningrad region will also be considered.  Finally, will the Baltic States as EU Member States provide an impetus for or a block on EU-Russian and Baltic Sea regional co-operative efforts for combating illicit arms trafficking?

Juncos Garcia, Ana (Loughborough University, a.e.juncos@lboro.ac.uk)
The EU’s Post-conflict Intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina: (Re)integrating the Balkans and/or (Re)inventing the EU?
Following the often-cited “fiasco” of the EU during the Yugoslavian wars, the later EU’s interventions in the Balkans and, in particular, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, may conversely serve as a scenario to foster the process of emergence of an EU international identity. Thus, CFSP/ESDP activities in BiH would play a dual role helping to (re)integrate BiH into the European mainstream, as well as favouring the development of an EU common identity as a normative power in its neighbourhood. EU’s intervention in BiH, supported by significant economic assistance and aiming to promote regional cooperation, human rights, democracy and rule of law, has proved to be essential for the economic recovery and institutional stability of the country. Besides, in the field of security, the institutionalisation and implementation of the first ESDP missions in BiH (the EU Police Mission and the EUFOR Althea) can play an important role in (re)integrating BiH into the European security structures. On the other hand, these activities may have reinforced the EU’s commitment to the promotion of democratic goals, the CFSP/ESDP credibility (having now the possibility of resorting to military instruments under certain conditions) and fostered endogenous processes of socialisation facilitating the construction/reinvention of the EU international identity as a normative power.

Kavalski, Emilian (Loughborough University, e.r.kavalski@lboro.ac.uk)
Iraq After the Balkans, the Balkans After Iraq: Who Is Next?
This paper acknowledges that both the Balkans and Iraq have become emblematic features of the post-Cold War geography of international relations. The suggestion, however, is that by concentrating on the current ruptures in the Euro-Atlantic community, most commentators: (i) neglect the macrohistorical tendency of the US towards unilateralism in response to ‘existential threats’ and to multilateral approaches whenever and wherever the sense of urgency is not that pressing; and (ii) overlook that the Iraq crisis is an aberration, in an otherwise persisting transatlantic cooperation. Subsequently, the exploration makes several claims. Firstly, it concentrates on the externally-driven processes of order-promotion in the region. The argument is that the Iraq crisis did not impact dramatically the import of both the EU and NATO in the region. The reason is that the Balkans persists as an area of cooperation between the transatlantic partners, as a result of their reaction to the Kosovo crisis. Secondly, this survey sketches the current regional perspective, which suggests that the transatlantic rows offered Balkan states the opportunity to pursue particular agendas. Finally, thirdly, this study prompts the argument that unlike Iraq, the Balkans are not prone to a relapse of another bout of their hackneyed ‘Balkanisation’

Kühn, Zdenek (Charles University, Czech Republic, zdenku@seznam.cz)
Shaping Multilevel Constitutionalism: First Decisions of the New EU Member States' Constitutional Courts
While pluralist conceptions of the interactions between European and national legal orders was rising in Western Europe, post-communist Europe came back to the Kelsenian concept of the legal system as a pyramid. While for Western Europeans it is the concept which cannot describe the relation between EU and national law, for Central and Eastern Europeans this concept is charming as something rediscovered quite recently. In communist Europe the very paradigm of continental legal thinking, a classical hierarchy of legal sources, in fact disappeared; the single legal order composed of the enumerated sources of law was replaced by an enormous number of decrees of very different character, some of them even not promulgated in the official gazettes. That is why post-communist lawyers of the new Member States stick so much to the classical Kelsenian paradigm of the legal system. One might therefore wonder what will be the answer of the new EU Member States’ constitutional courts to the question of the position of their system to EU law. The paper will analyze the first decisions of Central European constitutional courts relating to this issue which is for the successful application of EU law conditio sine qua non.

Pace, Roderick (University of Malta, roderick.pace@um.edu.mt)
EU Enlargement: The Mediterranean Dimension
The Mediterranean region has always been an area of co-operation and conflict.  In the post Cold War period, new challenges have arisen, such as WMD proliferation, terrorism and organised crime.  As the challenges have increased, new security initiatives have also been created, involving not only NATO and the EU, but also smaller regional bodies, such as the ‘Five plus Five’ arrangements.  The paper will consider how these security arrangements have dealt with such security concerns, focusing on how they have adapted to the post September 11^th security environment.
The paper will also consider the effects of enlargement on the region.  New CEEC member states will become, at least formally, members of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership.  As a result, will dialogue with the Southern Shore states be enhanced or rendered more difficult because of the diverse cultural identities and competing priorities?  The balance of influence within the EU, as a result of enlargement, definitely shifts eastwards.  The entry of Cyprus and Malta will barely redress this shift.  As a result, are the EU's New Neighbourhood Policy and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership adequate to meet the challenges of the region?

Pallis, Athanasios (University of the Aegean, Greece, apallis@aegean.gr)
Interests Representation in the EU: Lessons from the Maritime Case
The paper examines of maritime interests representation in the EU and extracts conclusion on the structures and the governability of interests representation in the process of sectoral policy integration.
Following a literature review of the role of maritime interest groups in the EU policy-making (Section 2), the paper analyses the variety of interest groups representing the maritime sector in EU affairs, as well as that of their structures, including membership numbers and types, location, internal structures (staff, committees) and budget (Section 3). Section 4 focuses on the lobbying practices they follow in order to influence policy outcomes. Both these sections use a primary data-set consisting of replies to a questionnaire that has been distributed to all the interest groups that are either members of the MIF, or are listed in relevant directories.
Using the same data-set, Section 5 offers inside knowledge of these interest groups and weighs the degree to which different factors affect the governability of maritime interests’ representation. The paper assesses how the ‘EU environment’ or the ‘economic environment’ affect the capacities of the existing maritime related interest groups with the contribution Moreover, it determines which circumstances contribute to, or undermine, the cohesiveness of these organisations and their potential to meet the needs of their members and become a coherent policy actor in the EU policy-making.

Pérez-Solórzano, Nieves (University of East Anglia, Norwich, n.perez-solorzano@uea.ac.uk)
The Europeanisation of Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe: A Comparison between NGOs and BIAs in the New Member State
The 2004 enlargement has transformed the European political arena.  While the EU comes to terms with a membership of 25 nation-states and 450 million citizens, the accession strategies developed by the candidate countries from Eastern Europe to meet the EU’s membership criteria have transformed their political and socio-economic domestic environments, against a background of systemic change since 1989.  Most of the literature studying the effect of EU membership on accession countries (ACs) uses the Europeanisation framework to assess patterns of policy transfer, the scale of domestic adaptation and the institutional and administrative capability of the new member states to meet EU standards as defined by 1993 accession criteria and the Commission’s prescriptive advice which framed the accession negotiations.  Given the importance of civil society and organised interests in a participatory model of democracy, it is surprising that few studies have analysed the impact of EU membership on interest intermediation in the ACs in a theoretically informed way and from a comparative perspective.  This paper seeks to fill this void and expand the remit of Europeanisation by assessing the impact of EU membership on the national and transnational repertoires for interest intermediation in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Hungary by answering the following questions:
 Is it possible to identify the impact of EU accession on interest intermediation through shifts towards more EU oriented priorities?
 Is it possible to identify a differentiated effect depending on who the stakeholders are?
 Do different national scenarios react differently to EU influence?

Rodin, Siniša (University of Zagreb, srodin@inet.hr)
Publication of Judicial Decisions as an Element of Legal Culture
The proposed paper discusses practices and forms of publication of judicial decisions in different legal cultures (US, EU, Croatia) and how published judicial decisions interact with social environment. The starting assumptions of the paper are:
1/ Harmonisation of a legal system of a candidate country with the legal system of the EU reaches beyond mere reception of legal rules and includes semantic harmonisation;
2/  Pursuing concept of "dominant culture" introduced by Iris M. Young, I propose that members of dominant legal culture in candidate countries and new Member States have difficulties to break away from well established national practices since they see them as universal.
Based on these assumptions I propose that both, legal formalism and judicial activism are equally meaningless if separated from social reality on which judicial decisions are based and claim that systematic, extensive and complete publication of judicial decisions is an indispensible element of  linking law with social reality.

Stulhofer, Aleksandar (University of Zagreb, astulhof@ffzg.hr)
Joint paper with Ivan Landripet & Ivan Rimac
Trust in the EU: The Case of Croatia 1995 - 2003
The paper offers an empirical analysis of the dynamics and correlates of trust in the EU in Croatia during the 1995-2003 period. The authors use data from three studies carried out on national probability samples (World Values Survey – Croatia 1995, European Values Survey – Croatia 1999, and the South East European Social Survey Project, 2003) to separate structural (human capital, social capital, standard of living) from situational predictors of local trust in the EU. The findings point out the importance of both.

Svyetlov, Oleksandr (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, a.svetlov@web.de)
Explaining the EU Enlargement
I analyse the decision of the European Union to expand to Central and Eastern Europe and ask why the EU opened accession negotiations with CEE countries from 1998 on. The analysis is guided by debate between rationalist and sociological approaches to the study of international institutions in the International Relations discipline.
The opening of accession negotiations with CEE countries surprised many rationalists. A rationalist cost-benefit analysis shows that Eastern enlargement cannot be accounted for as a result of selfish and instrumental choice by the EU member states. In a neorealist, power-based perspective, it is neither necessary nor useful for balancing purposes. From a neoliberal, interest-based viewpoint, Eastern enlargement is also hard to explain because the expected costs of full CEE membership exceed the expected benefits for the EU.
This thesis also advances hypotheses linking specific European institutions to changes in agent preferences, with my concern being to explore the pathways and mechanisms through which such shifts occur. A micro-, process- and agency-based argument on the nature of social interaction within institutions will be developed. Committees of the Council of Europe were examined empirically, asking whether the preferences and interests of social agents were changed as issues were discussed and debated.
Much of the literature downplays such dynamics and offers macro-historical or macro-sociological arguments on the preference-shaping influence of European institutions instead. Unfortunately these studies simply assert correlations that fail to specify the causal pathways connecting European institutions to preference change.
The 'raw material' is drawn from my two related projects. The first examines the evolution and diffusion of new civil norms in post-1989 Europe. It consists of the study of new normative understandings, and country research on Germany, Poland and Ukraine. The second is a project on international institutions and socialisation in the New Europe. It explores both micro-socialization dynamics (within EU institutions) and macro socialization in Eastern Europe and the former USSR.

Vidacak, Igor (Institute for International Relations, Croatia, ividacak@irmo.hr)
Exploring Routes of Influence of Croatian Business Actors in Brussels
This paper analyzes how Croatian business actors respond to the challenges of interest representation at the EU level and seeks to explore what are the main routes of influence of Croatian companies in Brussels. The multi-level governance and a very complex architecture of policy-making in the EU require a dramatic shift in patterns of interest intermediation as well as a thorough redefinition of lobbying strategies of Croatian companies. Drawing on the experiences of chosen business interest groups from new EU Member States in regard to lobbying in a new, very competitive environment of the enlarged EU, but also on the interviews with representatives of some of the strongest Croatian companies and business associations, the paper will attempt to answer some of the following questions: what is the EU-effect on the patterns of Croatian business interests representation, which direct or indirect 'lobbying channels' are available for Croatian business actors in Brussels, what are the major obstacles and opportunities of hiring professional lobbyist agencies or opening its own representative office in Brussels and to what extent Croatian companies are ready to adopt a new, multidimensional, multi-level pattern of interest representation.

Welch, Anthony (acwelch@aol.com)
A Successful Stability Pact: European Union Policy in South East Europe
The paper will begin with an overview of the work undertaken thus far, including progress under the Stability Pact, since the end of the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts, in order to demonstrate how this effort is now tailing off, even before the region has stabilised and found its place in the post-conflict world.  It will then examine how failures in policy will widen the chasm between the EU Member States (including those bordering the Balkans) and the Balkan States.
The paper will round up with an examination of the Security Pact, its implementation in South East Europe and the effect on security in the Balkans and the EU.  It will examine how changes in the aims and objectives of the Stability Pact and the EU approach to reconstruction and development may assist security and stability in an enlarged Europe in future years.

Whitaker, Richard (University of Leicester, rcw11@leicester.ac.uk)
The Impact of MEPs from the New Member States: An Initial Assessment
This paper will assess the positions held by and the activities of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) from the ten new member states during their first year of membership. Previous research on the European Parliament’s (EP) internal organisation suggests that no strict system of seniority operates and therefore new MEPs are able to obtain important positions in the EP either as members of prestigious committees or even as committee chairs. This paper will therefore use data from the EP’s List of Members to examine the extent to which MEPs from the new member states are represented proportionally in the EP’s committee system and among other offices within the parliament. The paper will also consider the committee activities of these new MEPs by looking at the amount and type of rapporteurships they have been allocated during their first year in the EP. The aim is to gain an initial impression of the impact made by MEPs from the new member states in the EP’s legislative activities.

Wilk, Katarzyna (Yale University, USA, katarzyna.wilk@yale.edu)
How do the Post-communist Multiple Transitions Influence Individuals’ Attitudes towards European Integration? The Effects of Gender, Generation, Social Class, and Political Values
In early 1990s, in addition to the complex post-communist transformation process, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic States have initiated the process of integration with the European Union. Membership in the EU became a challenge in these countries where double or triple post-communist transition have included shifts from authoritarian regime to democracy, from state controlled to free market economy, and in some instances, movement form the lack of sovereignty towards nation-state. Both, the multiple transitions and integration with the European Union have required adjustments on the national and individual levels.
However, unlike post communist systemic transformation, which did not require majority approval, integration with the EU became a controversial issue, of which the final outcome was depended upon citizens’ voting in national referenda. In the pre-accession period, therefore, European integration became a significant issue of political parties’ campaigns as a venue of gaining electorate. Most importantly, the prospective EU membership became a significant element of various national policies, which created distinct opportunity structures for different social groups, considerably affected individuals’ lives and shaped their attitudes towards European integration.
Embedded in multiple transitions, the post-communist countries’ membership in the EU presents theoretical and empirical opportunity to examine citizens’ support for the European integration. Existent theories on attitudes towards the EU do not take into account the uniqueness of the post-communist societies’ pre-accession situation. Empirical studies mainly cover old member states, which did not experience multiple transitions on the scale of the post-communist transition. An importance of examination attitudes towards European integration in the post-communist societies stems from the fact that citizens’ positions with this regard create political foundation for the institutional base of the united Europe, shaping it through mass political behavior. Thus, the knowledge about these attitudes and their determinants allows one predicting how participation of newly admitted states may affect the future integration process.
This research aims at providing a complex perspective on determinants and mechanisms of creation attitudes towards the EU at the time of accession. On the country level, opinions about the EU are analyzed as a result of multiple transitions, taking into account their sequence. On the individual level, attitudes towards European integration are viewed as outcomes of interplay between gender, generation, social class, and political values.
This research combines both quantitative and qualitative methods. On the basis of the European Social Survey data set, I contrast determinants of attitudes toward European integration for such countries as Hungary and Poland with those for the core of European Union, and latecomers. I mainly use the structural equation modeling for this purpose. However, for studying the mechanism of the influence of gender, generation, social class, and political values, I plan to conduct focus group interviews for selected categories of respondents in Hungary (Budapest) and Poland (Warsaw). In addition to the results of advanced cross-national quantitative data analyses, I intend to present preliminary results from conducted in Budapest and Warsaw focus group interviews.

Last modified: Thursday, 01 September 2005
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