Convegno Sisp 2017

Section 12. Politica e politiche dell'Unione europea (Politics and policies of the European Union)

Coordinators: Nicolò Conti (nicolo.conti@unitelma.it), Roberto Di Quirico (diquirico@unica.it)

Chairs: Nicolò Conti

Discussants: Benedetta Carlotti

The Anti-Systemic Facet of Euroscepticism: Conceptualization and Explanation
Michelangelo Vercesi (vercesi@leuphana.de), Eugenio Salvati (eugenio.salvati@unipv.it)
AbstractFor years, Eurosceptic parties have been being growing in both number and electoral support. In particular, this holds insofar as the European integration process becomes a politicized cleavage within European national polities. The notion of Euroscepticism has been used to denote different aspects and levels of the opposition to the European Union. To name a few, criticisms can point to institutions, policies, procedures, actors, as well as the integration project per se. Moreover, Euroscepticism can refer to both voters and elites. In this paper, we focus on national political parties. We propose a narrow conceptualization of Euroscepticism, by linking this concept to that of anti-system party. Based on indicators, we build an ‘index of Euroscepticism’. In our analysis, we ask why anti-system parties emerge and gain votes in some European countries, and not in others. The empirical part of the paper presents a QCA configurational analysis of the necessary and sufficient conditions of Euroscepticism and the related electoral successes.

Blaming Europe for the refugee crisis. Rappresentazioni mediatiche dell’UE in Italia e Germania in relazione alla crisi migratoria
Maria Grazia Galantino (mariagrazia.galantino@uniroma1.it)
AbstractL’instabilità politica e i conflitti in Medio Oriente e in Nord Africa hanno impresso una impennata senza precedenti alle migrazioni all’interno della regione e verso l’Europa, determinando quella che è stata fin da subito definita come una vera e propria “crisi migratoria” e producendo profonde divisioni nell’Unione Europea. Tra i paesi che più di altri hanno dovuto affrontare l’impatto di tale crisi e le difficoltà legate all’accoglienza dei migranti spiccano, per ragioni diverse, l’Italia e la Germania. La prima in quanto principale via di accesso verso l’Europa, la seconda come meta finale della maggioranza dei migranti. Il presente paper prende in considerazione questi due casi-paese, che sono indicativi delle profonde differenze tra i paesi europei non soltanto sul piano delle politiche in tema di migrazione e di gestione dell’accoglienza ma anche su quello del discorso pubblico. Se in Italia, fin dall’avvio dei flussi migratori nel 2011, ha prevalso una rappresentazione mediatica del problema e dei migranti come rischio per la sicurezza culturale, sociale e pubblica, in Germania il discorso politico-mediatico ha mostrato continui mutamenti di frame, oscillanti tra una iniziale rappresentazione dei migranti come vittime e una, più recente, che li rappresenta come potenziale minaccia per la sicurezza (villains). All’interno di una più ampia analisi del discorso mediatico sulle migrazioni nei due paesi, il lavoro esamina in particolare il ruolo attribuito all’UE nella gestione dei flussi e dell’accoglienza, attraverso l’analisi semi-automatica del contenuto di quattro quotidiani nazionali nel periodo 2015-2016. La scelta di tale frame temporale è dettata dall’esigenza di far emergere eventuali cambiamenti di frame, anche in combinazione con ulteriori sfide di natura esterna e di portata globale che minacciano la sicurezza dell’Europa, come il terrorismo internazionale. La nostra analisi sulla stampa fa emergere un comune atteggiamento di blame-shifting tra il livello nazionale e quello europeo, contribuendo in entrambi i paesi ad amplificare ed accentuare sentimenti e posizioni antieuropeiste. Nel contempo, rivela le peculiarità che caratterizzano il discorso politico-mediatico sulle migrazioni e sulle responsabilità dell’Unione e degli altri stati membri nei due casi di studio.

Gender, parenthood and Islam: what they tell us about Euroscepticism? - An analysis of the LN's discourse during the 2014 European campaign
gaia testore (gaiatestore@gmail.com), arianna santero (arianna.santero@unito.it)
AbstractIn the Italian political debate, for a long time ‘Europe’ has been described mainly as the ‘solution’ rather than the ‘problem’ (Radaelli and Franchino 2004, Dyson and Featherstone 1999). The 2014 European Elections showed a clear trend reversal with the strong advancement of the Eurosceptic parties. In this context, the Lega Nord party (LN) adopted not only economic arguments but also cultural and social ones, in line with the positions of other European populist parties (e.g. Barision and Mayer 2015). Within the LN’s discourse, Islamic veils, forced marriages, homosexual parenthood were set as instances through which LN positions itself in the Italian and European public debate on gender and cultural differences. On the one hand, LN adopted typical anti-Islamic discourse, blaming Europe for not doing enough to protect Christian culture and women. On the other hand, standing for the protection of the ‘traditional family’, it denounced Europe for the violation the right of people to self-determination on issues of strong ethical sensitivity. Europe was blamed for imposing the ‘gender ideology’ and supporting a homogenization of cultures and local identities. "The dichotomy of globalism-identity" was described as the new cleavage around which to gather to protect the European diversity and identities. Our interdisciplinary research (political sciences and sociology) wants to contribute to the debate on Euroscepticism (Usherwood 2014, Taggart 2006, Dye 2015) and on its problematic definition (Carlotti 2016), focusing on three themes of the LN political discourse: gender/Islam/homosexual parenthood. We analyse the positions on these issues of the main candidates of the LN within the 2014 electoral campaign and the declarations issued by the LN representatives at the European Parliament in the following six months. The document is based on a research carried out within the 7PQ bEUcitizen project (http://beucitizen.eu/) during which the following were analyzed: 1) articles, 2) the use of LN candidates for new media, 3) declarations of the five elected members of the LN after the elections (367 plenary speeches, 153 motions, 332 questions).

The Evolution of the AfD’s Opposition towards Europe. From Soft to Hard Euroscepticism?
Tim Henrichsen (tim.henrichsen@santannapisa.it)
AbstractGermany has recently experienced the birth of its first successful Eurosceptic party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Created in reaction to the introduction of the European Rescue Fund in 2013, the internal structure of the party has changed significantly since then. After considerable internal conflicts, a substantial number of members of the leading economic-liberal wing resigned from the party in 2015. Being superseded by the national-conservative faction, the party experienced massive electoral gains in some federal state elections in 2016; a circumstance strongly associated with the party’s rejectionist stance towards migrants during the refugee crisis. While this can be seen as the first major cornerstone of the parties swing to the right, further plans to cement the AfD into the political system by transforming it into a more socially acceptable conservative party were futile, therefore further contributing to the AfDs rightist expansion. It has not yet been clarified which impact these position shifts have on the party`s Eurosceptic attitudes. Can the AfD still be depicted as the non-populist, non-radical and soft Eurosceptic party as proposed by Arzheimer (2015)? Or have the inner-factional revolutions led to a fundamental turn of the Alternative for Germany to become a “classic” Eurosceptic populist radical right-wing party? I argue that the position shifts of the party to the right, also imply a move from a soft to a hard version of Euroscepticism. While under the liberal-economic wing the AfD mainly criticized the EU for economic reasons, opposition towards the Union now is borne out of a nativist approach, also including the demand for a withdrawal from the Union. This result will thus show that strong Eurosceptic tones are certainly present in Germany and that the country, as one of the last pro-European fortresses, has also partly broken with the “permissive consensus” towards Europe. To achieve this, I will rely on the evaluation of the AfD party manifesto for the upcoming German federal election and press releases of the party. In contrast to the analysis of media coverage, this approach enables me to give the AfD an unfiltered voice and to avoid any possible bias created by media reporting; an important aspect, given the conflictual relationship between the AfD and the media, which the party often describes as “lying press” that portrays social reality differently to what it actually is.

Chairs: Nicolò Conti

Discussants: Fedra Negri

A civic recession? Consequences of economic crisis on European attitudes and institutional trust iin European countries
Fabio Serricchio (fabio.serricchio@unimol.it)
AbstractThe extraordinary depth of the economic crisis that affected the Western world since 2008 has led to a number of “material” consequences for European citizens. In addition, the crisis has also significantly changed political, civic and social attitudes. This paper aims to analyze the effects and consequences of the economic crisis in political and social terms across the EU: on the one hand, it appraises the changes in levels of trust with national and supranational political institutions and in European identity and political support to the EU; on the other hand, it deepens the hypothesis that the crisis has triggered a kind of ‘civic recession’ (Colloca, 2016), i.e. a fall in the rate of civicness and interpersonal trust levels. Using Eurobarometer mass data, analysis is conducted on 28 European Union member states.

Old fractures for new generations? The role of social class in young people’s vote choice in the Brexit referendum
Davide Angelucci (davide.angelucci@unisi.it)
AbstractThe paper studies the relation between social class and vote choice among young people in the Brexit referendum. Contrary to conventional wisdom regarding the decline of social classes in advanced democracies, social stratification is deemed to affect young people’s experiences of life and politics in the globalization era. Indeed economic and social changes under the process of globalization are not neutral, but rather they seem to reproduce traditional class-cleavages. Far from being politically irrelevant, the ways in which different segments of youth experience social and economic change might be at the core of different political orientations. In particular, different life experiences related to economic and cultural inequalities might be at the basis of a new intra-generational conflict between different socio-economic and cultural classes. The concept of social class is therefore used as a necessary analytical tool and it is here defined as the result of a complex dynamic involving both economic (material) and cultural (non-material) dimensions (i.e. economic and cultural capital). Following this approach two different ideal-typical groups are identified: lagging-behind young people (characterized by low level of economic and cultural capital) and better-off young people (scoring high in both economic and cultural capital). This analytical scheme is eventually applied to assess whether and to what extent class positioning of young people has affected their vote choice in the Brexit referendum. In particular, young people with high levels of economic and cultural capital are considered to be better able to adapt to socio-economic change and to display more favorable attitudes towards globalization and supra-national integration as compared to those who lack cultural and economic resources. As a consequence, better off young people are hypothesized to be more likely to have voted Remain as compared to lagging-behind young people.

Supporting European integration in times of crisis: assessing the effects of global threats on citizens’ support in Italy
Nicolò Conti (nicolo.conti@unitelma.it), Danilo Di Mauro (danilo.dimauro@gmail.com), Vincenzo Memoli (memoliv@gmail.com)
AbstractLongitudinal analyses of Italian public attitudes towards the EU described a U-turn in public support for Europe during the last decade. Once one of the most Europhile member states of the EU, nowadays only a slight majority of Italians support the EU and its institutions. Somewhat paradoxically, along with a mounting public Euroscepticism, a request for more EU integration has also emerged among Italian citizens in the recent past. How can this phenomenon be explained? Is it possible that the threats associated with different crises affecting nowadays the EU have generated support for deeper integration among the public? This paper aims to address these questions through the analysis of public opinion data. Rationalism and cost/benefit explanations of support for the EU provide our main theoretical arguments inserted in the mechanism of a post-functional transformative cycle that may well represent the engine of future integration.

Chairs: Marinella Belluati

Discussants: Rolando Marini

Comunicare l’Europa nel nuovo millennio: identità, processi partecipativi e social media
Lucia D'Ambrosi (lucia.dambrosi@unimc.it), Andrea Maresi (amaresi@hotmail.com)
AbstractAdattarsi ai cambiamenti con sfide decisive per l'intero progetto europeo, come l'immigrazione, l'occupazione, la governance economica e cogliere le opportunità facilitando le decisioni dal basso, informando e coinvolgendo sempre più cittadini. Sono questi i requisiti imprescindibili per una cittadinanza europea attiva alla base del processo di consapevolezza, controllo e partecipazione alla vita pubblica, centrale per il rilancio della stessa Unione Europea. Una finalità molto complessa quando si parla di Pubblica Amministrazione e non solo rispetto alla macchina pubblica europea. Il contesto italiano, in particolare, paga il prezzo di un ritardo nel coinvolgimento, nella trasparenza e fiducia dei cittadini rispetto alle opportunità della PA. Un prezzo che si trasforma in un boomerang con continui traguardi mancati, frutto anche dell'incapacità di saper tradurre in azioni concrete le tante informazioni sull'Unione europea. O della confusione sul funzionamento delle Istituzioni europee. Le notizie che provengono "dall’Europa" sono spesso percepite come informazioni che non ci riguardano, difficilmente comprensibili, poco funzionali alle esigenze di informazione e trasparenza dei cittadini. Frutto anche del falso refrain “ce lo dice l’Europa”. Pur se questo alibi sta perdendo mano a mano il suo fondamento, grazie all'abbattimento mediatico delle distanze, a temi che stanno sempre di più assumendo una diffusione extra nazionale e un carattere più “decifrabile” dato l’impatto nazionale A partire da tali considerazioni il contributo si sofferma sull’attività di comunicazione al tempo dei social media e della trasformazione del panorama dell’informazione. Adattarsi al cambiamento per cogliere l’opportunità, continuando a informare e coinvolgere sempre più cittadini. E’ questa una delle sfide che coinvolgono attualmente le Istituzioni europee in un contesto di profonda crisi dell’informazione tradizionale, in particolare nel Belpaese, ma dove sarà centrale adattarsi ai nuovi modelli di business che stanno trasformando per sempre il mondo dell’informazione. Un lavoro complesso, che avanza spesso a fisarmonica, vittima dei tempi sui generis, del complicato schema decisionale dell’Ue e persino della concorrenza che si genera fra le Istituzioni europee, per ottenere la migliore copertura mediatica possibile. Un’attività che risulta comunque oggi sempre più centrale, in un momento di incertezza strutturale sul futuro del vecchio continente, in cui occorre davvero rinnovare il messaggio alla base del progetto comunitario, ritrovando valori e identità, per far comprendere meglio alla cittadinanza perché il nostro continente ha bisogno anche di una politica sovranazionale. Una politica che integri - ma non soffochi - le politiche degli Stati membri in quei campi dov’è meglio agire assieme piuttosto che separati, nell’interconnessa era della globalizzazione.

Unleashing emotions: Voices and themes in the 2016 EU British referendum
Simona Guerra (gs219@leicester.ac.uk)
AbstractAs noted in previous research (Exadaktylos et al. 2017) , although diversified, the political and social debates are deeply affected by the media. This might not always favour unbiased information, as the media undoubtedly represents a channel of contestation (Galpin and Trenz 2017). Preliminary studies address a possible ‘spiral of Euroscepticism’ following the preference towards ‘polemicism, excessiveness, and general negativity' (Cappella and Jamieson 1997, in Galpin and Trenz 2017). In addition, the widespread use of online media is likely to favour context- based events that do not necessarily support political information, with online media exposure likely to impact on more pessimism towards the EU and the trajectory of the EU integration process (Conti and Memoli 2017). This analysis presents the study on the 2016 EU British membership referendum campaign through the content analysis of three traditional media, in this case The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Express. The selection is based on a homogenous overview of possible benevolent and negative news, accompanied by a mainstream tabloid press contribution. This should provide a balanced analysis of the information that citizens received by the print media that represented an important source of information for about 36 per cent of the population (Guerrina et al. 2016), higher among those who voted Remain (43 per cent) compared to those who voted Leave (37 per cent). The paper first introduces the study of Euroscepticism in the media, second it focuses on the British case to then present the results of the study. The analysis shows that newspapers mainly represents males’ voices and issues relevant to sovereignty and immigration, strengthening and amplifying citizens’ fears and anxieties, and opening to new challenges after the British referendum.

Comunicare l’Europa nell’era della post-verità: l’operazione di mythbusting #DecodeursUE in Francia
Daria Santucci (daria.santucci@gmail.com)
AbstractIl sistema dell’informazione dell’Europa di oggi, e in generale il sistema dell’informazione globalizzato, si trova immerso in un sistema di post-verità: “contano più le emozioni […], più le bugie che il racconto veritiero dei fatti” (Pagliaro, 2017). I cittadini europei del nuovo millennio hanno “preso in mano le redini dell’informazione globale” (ibidem), con conseguenze rilevanti a livello politico. Come evidenziato dal caso della Brexit, emerge il bisogno di dare alla democrazia un significato costruttivo, proteggendola dai populismi e dalla disinformazione che possono attaccarla (Marco, 2016). Con lo slogan “Réalité alternative", "post-vérité" - et si nous en revenions aux faits?” la Rappresentanza della Commissione europea in Francia ha lanciato una campagna anti fake news. Con l’obiettivo di fare informazione corretta, la Rappresentanza francese ha avviato un’iniziativa di mythbusting chiamata #DecodeursUE e #UEcamarche: informazioni fattuali supportate da ausili di engagement visivo in risposta ai messaggi più ricorrenti contro l’Unione europea – il tutto in concomitanza con le elezioni presidenziali francesi e l’utilizzo del pro/anti-europeismo come strumento di posizionamento politico. Analizzando la relazione tra comunicazione europea ed era della post-verità, la ricerca approfondisce la reason why dell’iniziativa, descrivendone il contesto, la strategia e l’approccio comunicativo utilizzato. La questione è stata affrontata sul piano teorico, attraverso la presentazione dei principali studi sui processi di comunicazione nell’epoca delle fake news, ed empirico, attraverso un’analisi qualitativa dei documenti-chiave nonché interviste a funzionari europei. La ricerca ha come campo della ricerca le attività di comunicazione condotte dalla Rappresentanza della Commissione europea in Francia nel 2017, in particolare su Twitter e sulla pagina web dedicata decodeurseurope_fr.

Chairs: Roberto Di Quirico

Discussants: Daniel Spizzo, Giuseppe Acconcia

COME E QUALI POLITICHE DELL’UNIONE EUROPEA E DEGLI STATI MEMBRI INFLUENZANO I CONTINUI CAMBIAMENTI DELLE ROTTE MIGRATORIE IN AFRICA VERSO LA UE
PIETRO SODDU (psoddu@correo.ugr.es)
AbstractSISP GENERAL CONFERENCE 2017 Urbino: 14 -16 September 2017 ABSTRACT Sezione 12. Politica e politiche dell’Unione Europea Panel: The Many Crises of Europe. Structural Weaknesses, New Challenges and Politics of the European Union Autore Pietro Soddu psoddu@correo.ugr.es ISTITUZIONE: Instituto de Migraciones – Universidad de Granada - España COME E QUALI POLITICHE DELL’UNIONE EUROPEA E DEGLI STATI MEMBRI INFLUENZANO I CONTINUI CAMBIAMENTI DELLE ROTTE MIGRATORIE IN AFRICA VERSO LA UE L’articolo si prefigge il principale obiettivo di analizzare le politiche migratorie degli Stati Membri dell’Unione Europea e come queste ultime costituiscano un fattore rilevante nel cambiamento delle Rotte Migratorie che dal Continente Africano si dirigono verso i Paesi della Sponda Sud del Mediterraneo. Non si tratta in modo assoluto di attribuire solamente delle responsabilità politiche a giustificazione di un processo migratorio che negli ultimi anni, sembra essere divenuto incontrollabile. Ci troveremo da una parte situazioni politiche ed assetti di governo particolarmente instabili e, dall’altra reazioni politiche che si esplicitano in vere e proprie politiche capaci di cambiare ed influenzare le scelte individuali dei potenziali migranti, nell’utilizzazione dello spazio geografico. Una certezza ed un punto sul quale è nostra intenzione insistere con forza si relaziona con il riconoscimento generalizzato del fatto che la migrazione e la circolazione di persone intra – africana supera di gran lunga quella che si dirige verso i Paesi dell’Unione Europea. Possiamo affermare con un certo grado di affidabilità che la scelta individuale, piuttosto ponderata e sofferta di percorrere un sentiero geografico irto di numerosi ostacoli piuttosto che un altro, dipende dalle politiche in ambito migratorio, di chiusura od apertura da parte dei Paesi Membri della Sponda Sud dell’Unione Europea e della stessa UE. L’obiettivo più volte richiamato dagli studiosi, piuttosto che dei politici nazionali di una europeizzazione della politica migratoria si è sempre scontrato con le barriere poste dagli Stati Nazionali, riguardo ad una esclusività delle scelte in questo campo. In questo senso il nostro ragionamento vuole e si propone una contestuale descrizione ed esplicazione del cambiamento delle Rotte Migratorie nel Continente Africano in conseguenza di quelle politiche europee e nazionali, che nell’attualità sono una delle concause che fanno in modo che ad alimentare quelle Rotte si aggiungano cittadini provenienti da altre parti del nostro pianeta. Il risultato è sotto gli occhi di tutti: cittadini di Paesi di un Continente afflitto da fortissime instabilità politiche, guerre civili e persecuzioni religiose, chiedono ad un altro Continente (quello Africano) un passaggio obbligato, attraverso nuove Rotte Migratorie, per raggiungere un altro Continente, quello Europeo: una meta di salvezza ed aspirata libertà.

The travails of competitive solidarity: EU public policy and the challenge of competitiveness
Paolo Chiocchetti (mail@paolochiocchetti.it)
AbstractThe paper presents the main findings of a forthcoming interdisciplinary book on competitive solidarity in the EU (Allemand and Chiocchetti, 2017). Over the last two decades, the European Union and its Member States have increasingly embraced the promotion of competitiveness as the appropriate way to boost growth and modernize European societies. This process encroaches on traditional institutions and tools inspired by a logic of redistributive solidarity: the welfare state, public services, taxation, macro-economic policy, industrial policy, labour law, and so on. While some authors point to the corrosive effect of competitiveness on the ability of states to steer economic processes in an expansionary, balanced, and socially inclusive direction (Arestis and Sawyer, 2013; Crespy and Menz, 2015), the dominant view posits competitiveness as a necessary precondition for the pursuit of broader social goals. Are the logic of competitiveness (Cerny, 2010) and the logic of solidarity (Stjerno, 2005) inherently contradictory, potentially compatible, or mutually reinforcing? What is the balance sheet of the attempts of the dominant models of public policy conciliate them in various forms of ‘competitive solidarity’ (Streeck, 1999)? The book sheds light on these questions through comparative and single-case studies on EU law and policy, European economic governance, industrial policy, regional development, and welfare state reform. The paper has a two-fold goal. First, it revisits and classifies the different ways in which competitiveness and solidarity are articulated in the European social and political thought. Secondly, it provides an overview of the tensions, success, and limits of current models of competitive solidarity in post-crisis EU.

The Transnational Financial Industry and the Politics of European Capital Markets Union
Giuseppe Montalbano (giuseppe.montalbano@sns.it)
AbstractAim of the proposed paper is to analyze the influence of European cross-border banks, investment firms and other key financial actors in the making of the project of Capital Markets Union (CMU) in the EU as key pillar of the Investment plan of the Juncker Commission. The main hypothesis I will defend is that the preferences of the EU transnational financial market incumbents and their relatively concerted lobbying action to the newly elected EU Parliament and Commission in 2014 have been a main determinant of the CMU initiative and definition. The CMU marked a significant change in the post-crisis financial industry/policy-makers relationships, signaling a return to a pre-crisis “quiet politics” environment, characterized by a proactive stance on the part of the business actors and a renewed willingness of the legislators to embrace the industry views and expertise. The research will be focused on those elements of the CMU related to the revision of the most burdensome regulatory measures implemented with the Capital requirements and MiFID II legislations, as well as on the initiative to revamp of securitization throughout Europe, promoting the dismantling of barriers to cross-border investment flows and deepening the regulatory harmonization in the Single market in financial services. The paper will be structured as follows. In the first section I will expose the overall research design and its theoretical underpinnings, based on a Critical IPE approach in the EU integration. According to the latter, I will identify in the politics of competition among EU- and domestic-oriented financial firms the underlying causal factor to explain the main rationale of the CMU plan. In the second part, I will analyze the interests of the cross-border financial actors in fostering the integration of the capital markets in the EU, and their relationships with other relevant economic and social constituencies for the biggest EU Member States, the European Parliament and the Commission. In the third section, I will adopt a process tracing method to analyze the financial industry lobbying during the different legislative phases, by focusing on the Commission, the European Parliament and three main European financial centers (UK, Germany and France), from 2014 to the Commission mid-term review in June 2017. In the conclusion I will show how the empirical findings support an explanation of the CMU based on the preferences of the European cross-border financial industry.

Europa 2021-2027: nuovi approcci per la certificazione delle competenze degli europrogettisti
Daniel Spizzo (spizzo.daniel@gmail.com)
AbstractLa metodologia del ciclo di progetto, a livello di policy making europeo, è sottoposta ormai a critiche sempre più diffuse (Carrino 2016). Da più parti (Spizzo 2017), soprattutto tra un’ampia gamma di esperti europrogettisti, viene considerata come una vera e propria debolezza strutturale dell'UE europea. La sfida maggiore consta attualmente nel mettere mano a un corpus dottrinario - più che trentennale - che per la sua complessità sembra inaffrontabile dal punto di vista della politica e della governance europee (Piattoni 2016). Ma anche qui le cose stanno cambiando. Per il futuro periodo di programmazione 2021-2027, gran parte del dibattito si focalizza su tre livelli: 1) l’orientamento europeista del ciclo di progetto tradizionale (Morin 2013); 2) la propensione all’innovazione (De Toni 2013) attraverso l'approccio del quadro logico; 3) la skills certification degli europrogettisti (Assoeuro 2017; Pmbok 2013). Sul primo punto, le osservazioni più radicali s’incentrano sul debole europeismo metodologico del CDP. L’attuale ampio dibattito sull’identità europea nel post-2008 e nell'era del terrorismo islamico (Francfort 2016) e sul postcosmopolitismo europeo (Beck 2015) non è stato tuttora usato nel definire le fasi iniziali della project definition e come tale non è capace a livello di progettazione di routine di veicolare principi e valori chiave dell’europeismo. Secondo, sul piano del suo potenziale innovativo, da più parti viene evidenziato il fatto che i metodi più impattanti del design thinking e dell’open innovation (OpenIdeo CHallenges2016)non sono stati integrati nel corpus centrale del CDP. Infine, terzo, l’analisi dettagliata delle competenze, delle conoscenze e delle abilità degli europrogettisti che usano il CDP (Schunk 2014) non trova attualmente riscontro nella certificazione ufficiale dello skills panorama dell'Ue. Il presente paper in vista dell'apertura del nuovo ciclo di programmazione 2021-2027 mira pertanto a presentare un quadro aggiornato sui topics più caldi attualmente evidenziati nei position papers di influenti gruppi di pressione (ManagEur 2016) e di pubblicazioni controcorrente di practitioners (Carrino 2016) ed esperti soprattutto di CDP nella Cooperazione allo Sviluppo per evidenziare questioni di ampia rilevanza anche a livello di Politics della Ue.

Governing through enabling? Global environmental change and EU voluntary networks
Giuseppe Acconcia (giuseppe.acconcia@unipv.it), Ekaterina Domorenok (ekaterina.domorenok@unipd.it)
AbstractWhereas alarming impacts of climate change have dramatically increased around the globe, there is still a lack of effective policy solutions able to meet complex environmental challenges at both international and domestic levels. Remarkably, the attention given to environmental issues in political agendas has further declined as a consequence of the recent economic crisis, due to the reduction of public spending and a paramount priority attributed to economic and social concerns. In such a context, the relevance of bottom-up commitments for coping with climate change has regained attention in core international agreements, as well as in specific policy programmes, in particular in Europe. In fact, in contrast with the traditional regulatory measures that have prevailed in EU environmental polices over the past decades, a number of new measures have been promoted within the current strategy of climate policy mainstreaming, being underpinned by a cross-sectoral approach and widely relying onself-regulation and financial incentives. Several actions undertaken by these programmes target urban areas specifically, in order to enhance their potential for mitigation and adaptation measures by strengthening local public-private partnerships in low carbon projects (Jeronen Van der Heijden 2014), as well as by activating transnational networks, which enable learning and cooperation among municipal authorities in order to develop common policy solutions to climate change problems. This paper examines the case of such a network - the Covenant of Mayors (CoM) - which was launched in 2008 in order to encourage local efforts in the implementation of the EU climate package objectives. With the aim of strengthening local awareness of the relevance of cross-sectoral policy measures for the reduction of CO2 emissions, the CoM has established a mechanism of diffusion of knowledge, informal monitoring and benchmarking, relying on mutual trust and voluntary commitment of participating municipalities and other sub-state authorities. Drawing on a polycentric governance approach (Ostrom 2010), this study analyses the implementation of the CoM in four countries (Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK) with the aim of understanding to what extent it has encouraged the action of local authorities within the EU climate change strategy and which factors have determined its successes and failures in different contexts.

National Coordination Systems : models of national coalition building in EU decision-making
Edoardo Amato (edoardamato@gmail.com)
AbstractThe recent economic crisis has oriented the European negotiations toward a more intergovernmental approach, by slowing down the process of European integration. Each member states (MS) maintains its centrality within the European policy making, by attempting to influence directly the decision making process and thus protecting their national interests. Some scholars have been focused on the formal and official side of this national effort, observing the actions of the national representatives within the European Council and the Council of European Union. Others scholars, instead, have addressed the direct informal side of this phenomenon, explaining how national institutions can lobby those actors who compose the institutional and political plethora within European Commission and European Parliament or via other institutionalized channels of influence. This article would like to analyze the presence of a national way of lobbying based on the creation of coalitions, and/or networks, among those actors operating in Brussels who share the same nationality (institutional players -members of the European bureaucracy-, political actors -members of the European Parliament-, national domestic interest groups). The most interest aspect of these national containers is as they act together, as a network. Indeed, all the actors that compose them, already playing functions within European PM. Therefore NCS is an alternative and/or an integrative avenue in order to influence the negotiations at the European level, based also both on cultural and on linguistic aspects. The effectiveness of these systems in protecting claimed national interests would be given both by the adoption of a shared strategy among different levels of action and by the ability to gather together the different kinds of resources available to each national actors. Moreover, other two exogenous factors would like to be really crucial: the presence of a strong national interest and some characteristics of each political cultures. Often the importance and the functions of these NCS are relativized. These relational strategies are informal, thus making the NCS more difficult to be observed. Moreover, the European landscape is really differentiated. Not all the MSs are able to use this integrative resource of lobbying and to work jointly, defining general national aims and leading the several national actors operating at Brussels.

Chairs: Sabrina Cavatorto, Camilla Mariotto

Discussants: Sabrina Cavatorto

EMU path dependency from the single market to the fiscal union: a comprehensive account
francesco nicoli (f.nicoli@uva.nl)
AbstractDoes integration advance through crises, as hinted by policy-makers such as jean Monnet or Romano Prodi? To what extent failure in responding to crises may lead to disintegration instead? This paper provides a coherent understanding of the economic logic of European integration from the Common Market to today’s challenges, with a specific focus on periods of crisis, in the attempt of showing how each incremental step in integration constituted a response to a specific macroeconomic challenge. Three specific phases of integration are identified, each marked by a fundamental challenge visualized trilemmas; the response on one specific set of problems resolves one given crisis, but sets the stage for the next set of problems to arise. The “Single Market Trilemma”, or (Meade’s trilemma), characterized the then-EEC from 1958 to 1986; the “Monetary Trilemma” characterized the EU between 1986 and 1999. The "monetary union phase" is characterised bt two more trilemmas: Kenen "adjustment" trilemma, and Van Riet "financial stability" trilemma. Both trilemmas require, to be consistent with monetary union and previous steps of integration, a move towards fiscal integration, which would move the EMU in a final “legitimacy trilemma” that has applied since 2011 and it is yet to be resolved.

The European Pillar of Social Rights and the promotion of Social Europe in turbulent times
Francesco Corti (francesco.corti2@unimi.it), Patrik Vesan (p.vesan@univda.it)
AbstractOn January 2017, the European Parliament voted in support of a broad report about the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR), an initiative launched in March 2016 by Jean-Claude Juncker, with the aim of updating the EU social acquis. On April 26th 2017, European Commissioner Thyssen and Vice-President Dombrovskis presented the EC position and a set of proposals on the EPSR. This paper aims at analysing both policy proposals and political dynamics related to the EPSR that have emerged during these last months. In particular, the paper focuses on the debate within the European Parliament. Our study looks at the the positions of the main EP party groups (EPP, S&D, ECR, ALDE, GUE-NGL, Greens/EFA). As regards methodology, it relies on a detailed process tracing based on the analysis of single votes and amendments, interviews to MEPs and the examination of positions papers, internal documents and letters/briefings, as well as other relevant secondary sources. The focus is both on the bargaining process within the Employment and Social Affairs Committee and MEPs’ behaviours in the plenary session. The aim is to map the main conflictual lines that emerged during the EP debates. The analytical description of the content and process of the parliamentary debate serves as a basis for the interpretative part of the paper. Building on a neo-Weberian approach (Ferrera 2016), our paper aims at explaining the parliamentary outcome as the result of both specific ideas and political factors. Our paper contributes to the debate in a three-fold sense. Firstly, it provides insights about those actors who can shape the political and intellectual ground of the EPSR. Secondly, it paves the way for analysing the EP's attempt to influence the EC in the drafting process of the EPSR. Finally, our study contributes to the analysis of the possibility that a new ‘reconciliation scenario’ between economic and social imperatives will emerge. In light of the recent proposals of the EC, a systematic analysis of the process, which is unfolding behind this initiative, as an attempt to contain "clash dynamics" at the EU level, assumes a valuable importance. This paper is part of the ongoing research project RESCUE - «Reconciling Economic and Social Europe: the role of ideas, values and politics», a five-year research project funded by the European Research Council (ERC).

Social partners’ multi-level involvement in the European Semester
Sebastiano Sabato (sabato@ose.be), Bart Vanhercke (vanhercke@ose.be), Slavina Spasova (spasova@ose.be)
AbstractThe relaunch of social dialogue and the involvement of the social partners in the procedures of the European Semester are among the top priorities of the Juncker Commission. In this respect, a number of mechanisms for involvement (new venues and procedures) have been put in place since 2014. This paper explores the mechanisms through which European and national social partners’ organisations are involved in the European Semester at both the European and national levels, as well as the outputs and the quality of such an involvement. Our research methodology is based on a careful review of key official documents and of the scientific literature, complemented by four semi-structured interviews with eight key players (including European Commission’s officials and social partners’ representatives). On a more theoretical ground, we rely on the literature on multi-level governance and interest groups in order to assess the key determinants of social partners’—and public actors’—strategies, the extent to which the most recent developments can transform the European Semester into a multi-level governance system and the (input, output and throughput) legitimacy of the new system. We conclude that, while recent developments have led to an increased involvement of the social partners in the European Semester, and social partners’ strategies for being involved are more effective, the implications for the legitimacy of the system are limited.

ECB interest rates setting in hard times. A case of retraction.
Sara Rocchi (sara.rocchi@sns.it)
AbstractCentral banks have played a key role in dealing with the macroeconomic consequences of the financial crisis that began in the summer 2007. Since then both conventional and unconventional monetary policies have been implemented to restore financial stability and promote economic growth. The ECB is no exception. This paper focuses on ECB decision to rise interest rates in April and in July 2011 and to reverse itself only four months later. Why such an unusual quick change in the stance of monetary policy happened? The objective of the analysis is to test the explanatory power of some of the most important causal factors pointed out by the literature on monetary policy determinants. Specifically since interest rates changes strongly influenced the Euro Area member states' economic performance, we will pay particular attention to the role played by national governments: the ECB remained independent in its policy decisions or its relationship with goverments changed during the crisis?

Rights and Influence of National Parliaments in the Eurozone Crisis: Winners and Losers
Jakob Redl (jakob.redl@sbg.ac.at), Sonja Puntscher-Riekmann (Sonja.PUNTSCHER-RIEKMANN@sbg.ac.at)
AbstractThis paper analyses the influence of national parliaments in the preference formation of member states’ governments during the Eurozone crisis. Our new data set „EMU_FORM“ is based on 96 semi-structured expert interviews with high ranking policy makers that combined closed and open questions, allowing us to assess for each Euro-area member whether the influence of national parliament, the government majority or the opposition minority vis-à-vis the respective government changed between 2010-2015. Our analysis indicates that the (Eurosceptic) opposition benefits most in those countries with the strongest parliament participation rights in EU matters. Based on a qualitative analysis of the interviews, it will be shown that there is a significant correlation between an increase in influence of the opposition minority and a high public resonance and contestation of Eurocrisis related policy issues. If we compare group 3 (no change) and 4 (weaker opposition) the result even shows a contrary effect. This indicates that in member states where the opposition was weakened throughout the crisis, the public resonance was higher than in parliaments were the opposition stayed constant. Nevertheless, the opposition could not benefit from the public awareness but was even marginalized. The country reports indicate that a high public resonance despite a weak opposition can be explained in two ways. First as the example of Germany and Estonia shows, it is possible that there is an opposition (emerging) outside the parliament that benefits and/or uses the public resonance and contestation. Second as the examples of Cyprus and Ireland suggest, if polarization occurs not between domestic actors but between a member state and European actors (EU institutions or other member states) the opposition is not able to benefit from this polarization. This analysis will not only contribute to the literature on the involvement of national parliaments in EU affairs but shed light on the domestic politicization against the background of the given asymmetry in parliamentary involvement. The data for this research are collected by the Horizon 2020 funded research consortium (EMUchoices.eu) and these preliminary results will support the case selection for the project’s comparative case studies.

Chairs: Sabrina Cavatorto, Camilla Mariotto

Discussants: Alessia Damonte

Implementing the EU fiscal rules
Camilla Mariotto (camilla.mariotto@unimi.it)
AbstractSince 1997 the European Monetary Union has been centred on the Stability and Growth Pact, as it provides the economic policy coordination and surveillance framework for fiscal policy of the European Union. As part of the EU’s annual economic governance cycle, after each member state submits its Stability or Convergence Programme, the Council adopts country-specific recommendations. How and why do member states comply with these recommendations? In this paper, I rely on a unique dataset, which includes the assessments of the 326 country-specific recommendations. Preliminary results show that member states made some progress in 44 percent and no or limited progress in 40 percent of the recommendations that were released between 2002 and 2015. Only in 2010 member states are significantly more successful to implement. The analysis includes several determinants. Some of them rest at country-level, such as countries’ bargaining positions during the negotiation of the fiscal rules (both along the ideological and integration dimensions); bargaining power resources (economic size); institutional constraints (whether countries are undergoing excessive deficit procedure); domestic political constraints (e.g. Eurosceptic public opinion and electoral cycles); and economic factors (e.g. business cycle). Other determinants include the type of policies to implement.

Pensions and the European Semester: A Quantitative Analysis of Pension-Related mentions in Country-Specific Recommendations (2011-15)
Mattia Guidi (mattiaguidi@gmail.com), Igor Guardiancich (igor.guardiancich@gmail.com)
AbstractAlthough national welfare states have been, historically, bastions of national sovereignty, European integration has eroded the their external boundaries and reduced the member states’ capacity to control them. The European Semester, introduced in 2011 in order to increase coordination among EU member states’ macroeconomic policies, has targeted, among other policies, national pension systems. This paper carries out a quantitative analysis (based on qualitative content analysis) of all pension-related mentions contained in country-specific recommendations (CSRs) published between 2011 and 2015. We identify four main issues that pension-related recommendations address (fiscal sustainability, age, elderly employability, adequacy) and we use multinomial logistic regression to test whether macro-economic factors (such as debt, future pension expenditure, future pension benefits) and political factors (such as replacement risk and left-right position of national governments) make some types of recommendations more likely than others.

Coordinating Macroeconomic Policies in the Eurozone
David Bokhorst (d.j.bokhorst@uva.nl)
AbstractOne of the main novelties of the new post-crisis economic governance framework of the European Union (EU) is the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP). This paper analyses the hierarchical character of the MIP. It has been argued that the MIP can constrain national democratic decision-making and thus adds to a perceived technocratic dominance of the EU. On the other side of the debate some argue that the MIP is still insufficiently binding to induce Member States to enact the reforms that are deemed appropriate for a well-functioning Eurozone. Within the context of this debate this paper – the second of a series - provides empirical evidence of whether recommendations under the MIP contribute to real policy change and how this role is to be perceived, whether as hierarchical imposition or more in terms of constructive dialogue. It does so by tracing the role of two domestically contested MIP recommendations, namely: the liberalisation of professional services in Italy and the Belgian practice of automatic wage indexation. It argues that the influence of the MIP should be seen in terms of agenda setting and possible political pressure if the domestic environment allows for it rather than legal coercion. Secondly, it argues that over the years the instrument has become more political, interactive and non-hierarchical.

From the domain of experts to domestic political ownership: Europe 2020, the European semester and the Italian anti-poverty strategy
Marcello Natili (marcello.natili@unimi.it), Madama Ilaria (ilaria.madama@unimi.it), Agostini Chiara (chiara.agostini@secondowelfare.it)
AbstractThe paper deals with the social component of the European Semester by investigating its possible effects in Italy. More in depth, with a focus on the anti-poverty policy domain, the study aims to disentangle the possible impact - either substantive and/or procedural - of the social dimension of Europe 2020 strategy on the domestic arena. Through the assessment of multi-level interactions over the first five European Semester cycles, our findings show that in Italy the anti-poverty component of the EU2020 strategy had effects not just on the side of stakeholder involvement and cross sectoral integration, but also on substantive policy content, by providing domestic actors with resources to be treasured towards the modernization of the Italian weak social assistance model. This developments result crystal clear when EU-Italy interactions are read in conjunction to the parallel process of reprogramming EU 2007-2013 funds and negotiations for the 2014-2020 budget cycle, which made explicit reference to Europe 2020 overarching strategy and allocated a share of resources of the European Social Fund to the fight against poverty. The paper deploys a qualitative approach. The in depth reconstruction of multi-level interactions over the first five European semester cycles relied on documentary analysis and 10 semi-structured interviews conducted with key informants and policy makers at the national and supra-national level.

Chairs: Benedetta Carlotti

Discussants: Sabrina Cavatorto

Verso una tripla elica NAFTA – UE – MERCOSUR. Una lettura socio-giuridica della politica internazionale della UE
Sara Petroccia (sarapetroccia@gmail.com), Andrea Pitasi (pitasigda@gmail.com), Emilia Ferone (emiliaferone@gmail.com)
AbstractIl presente paper intende offrire un’analisi socio giuridica della politica dell’Unione Europea e le sue relazioni internazionali attraverso una chiave sistemica che ne vuole evidenziare il confine tra sistema e ambiente nell’evoluzione della stessa Unione Europea. Da un punto di vista micro sociale i movimentismi e scariche emozionali di tipo virale attraverso i social media possono plasmare una percezione di lebenswelt (mondi della vita) innegabilmente connotati da stigma nazionalisti, populisti e di apparente disintegrazione dell’Unione Europea. Da una prospettiva sistemica tali populismi, nazionalismi e spinte disintegrative sono rumore in senso luhmanniano e sono motivo di risonanza e di turbolenza non in grado di intaccare l’Unione Europea a livello sistemico. L’Unione Europea nel 2017 ha compiuto un passo importantissimo con il CETA nel creare un libero scambio tra l’UE e il Canada in maniera diretta e tra l’UE, il Messico e gli Stati Uniti in maniera indiretta consentendo nei primi mesi del 2017 alla Casa Bianca di usare un doppio registro di comunicazione, uno in politica interna e uno in politica estera. In politica interna una certa demagogia nazionalista-populista di Trump nel difendere i confini statunitensi dichiarando che non avrebbe sottoscritto il TTIP con la UE; in politica estera rinnovando il NAFTA di cui gli USA fanno parte con Canada e Messico, la Casa Bianca ha reso superfluo sottoscrivere il TTIP in quanto di fatto il CETA apre la pista ad un’area di libero scambio tra il NAFTA tutto e l’UE. Oltretutto il Messico membro a pieno titolo del NAFTA e nella sua posizione di observer member del MERCOSUR è anche strategico nel creare una tripla elica, nel senso di Leydesdorff tra NAFTA, Unione Europea e MERCOSUR. Tale cosmopolitismo può essere una risorsa strategica anche per l’Unione Europea visto che suddetti fenomeni di turbolenza nazionalista e populista potrebbero innescare dinamiche completamente estranee all’UE ma che si sono presentate ai propri confini anche in tempi relativamente recenti, fenomeni quali stermini di massa e genocidi. Questo paper intende offrire un’analisi essenziale dello scollamento che è venuto a crearsi tra la percezione micro sociale populista e nazionalista nei confronti dell’UE e di come essa invece stia sempre più strutturandosi verso un ampliamento ed un’espansione di alleanze globali e internazionali con l’effetto di richiedere una riconcettualizzazione dell’idea stessa di cittadinanza.

United they fight the EU? Radical right wing parties\' EU-opposition in the EP
Benedetta Carlotti (benedetta.carlotti@sns.it)
AbstractDuring the last European Parliament (EP) election more than fifty new members of the European Parliament coming from radical right wing parties have been elected. The predominantly media-driven thesis that cooperation among such actors is mainly driven by financial incentives deriving from EP’s internal rules is still widespread. According to several studies in fact, the core reason for the existence of radical right wing parties is largely based on their concerns about national sovereignty and identity. Besides having different national backgrounds and different national interests to defend, such forces share a common feature: their criticism to the EU, to the European policies, to the European elite, to the European regime and to the European community. In other words, they are generally described as Eurosceptic. The EP represents a public directly elected supranational arena where such parties may express their criticism to the EU in a pan-European perspective. Exploring the activity of the major components of the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) party group in the EP this paper has three main objectives. First, it starts questioning how much is the concept of Euroscepticism suitable to portray a standing developing and nuanced phenomenon, thus proposing a way to reconceptualise it in terms of opposition to the EU (EU-opposition). Secondly, applying the concept of EU-opposition to the empirical analysis of MEPs’ speeches in the EP, this work explores differences and similarities in radical right-wing parties positioning to the EU. Thirdly, it proposes to understand if differences and similarities in right wing parties positioning to the EU play a role in their cooperation in the EP.

European Political Parties vs. European Parliament Political Groups: the organizational implications of their behavioral and ideological balance of power.
Lorenzo Cicchi (lorenzocicchi@gmail.com), Enrico Calossi (enrico.calossi@unipi.it)
AbstractThe aim of this paper is to assess the relationship between the European Parliament Political Groups (EPPGs) and the European Political Parties (EuPPs) in terms of their internal cohesion and in terms of their organizational strength. The European party system has been studied from a variety of point of views. Starting from the the conceptualization of the theory of the “three faces of party organization” (Katz and Mair 1993), one can see that while the study of each face and the relationship between the Party on the Ground (the national parties) and the other two faces has received satisfactory scholarly attention (Ladrech 2007, Whitaker 2011), the relationship between the Party in Public Office (represented by the EPPGs) and the Party in Central Office (the EuPPs) is still understudied. In particular, it is still unclear how the balance of power between the EPPGs and the EuPPs is structured from an organizational point of view and what logics it follows. On this aspect, we argue that there is a strong correlation between the predominance of one actor over the other both in terms of their internal ideological and behavioral unity and of their organizational strength. We employ a series of indicators to measure these aspects. The internal unity of the EPPGs is measured by their voting cohesion, in line with the most diffused literature on the topic (Hix et al. 2006, 2007), while EuPPs’ internal unity is measured by their ideological consistency with the parties they are composed of, using Euromanifesto data. The comparison of these elements within each “political family” should show how the balance of power may be skewed more towards the EPPG or the relevant EuPP. Similarly, the indicators used to measure the organizational strength of the EPPGs and the EuPPs are their staff and financial resources. Similarly, the comparison of these indicators reveals the balance of organizational power between the EPPGs and the EuPPs. Our expectation is that the higher is the dominance of the EPPG from an ideological and behavioral point of view over its related EuPP, the higher is the organizational strength of the group over the party, i.e. the balance of power of organizational strength is usually paired by the same behavioral and ideological strength. We perform this analysis for the last two European Parliament’s legislatures (2009-2014 and available data for 2014-2019).

Chairs: Francesco Marangoni

Rethinking the class cleavage: anti-liberal party views as fuel of Euroscepticism
Nicolò Conti (nicolo.conti@unitelma.it), Danilo Di Mauro (danilo.dimauro@gmail.com), Vincenzo Memoli (memoliv@gmail.com)
AbstractAlthough some of the party families traditionally opposing economic liberalism have declined, or have re-aligned embracing a market-oriented agenda, there is no evidence that class differences within society are over and that they may not be mobilised again for purposes of electoral support. In this paper, we test whether the protest parties of both ends of the political spectrum politicise systematically anti-liberal views to build their consensus on the class cleavage. Their platforms often revolve to arguments about social injustice, labor exploitation, market regulation. In this perspective, the EU is often represented as a main driver of the main economic imbalances within society and as enemy of the lower classes. In the paper, we analyse the increasing overlap between a class cleavage and the cleavage on European integration across the European party systems. This is done through the analysis of Euromanifesto data that have been collected within the H2020 EUENGAGE Project.

The Signs of Disaffection: European Citizens’ Attitudes towards their Supranational Institutions in Times of Crisis
Gianni Del Panta (jofplant@gmail.com)
AbstractAccording to several scholars, citizens’ disaffection towards democratic procedures has been on the rise in almost all longstanding democracies in the last decades. In particular, such a trend would have been strengthened by the outbreak of the 2008 economic crises. Whilst other academics have casted doubts both on the existence and actual intensity of the phenomenon, opening therefore a stimulating debate, a common view has been that scepticism about the way in which democracy works in Europe is more directed against the European Union (EU) and its institutions rather than towards each single country’s democratic architecture. The main aim of this article is therefore to evaluate empirically whether or not the support to the EU has decreased on earnest in the post-2008 economic crises period. By relying on three waves of mass surveys conducted, respectively, in 2007, 2009, and 2016 a diachronic analysis of European citizens’ attitudes towards their supranational institutions is conducted. The present paper focuses specifically on eight countries – France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the UK. This allows to deal with a particular interesting time spam – that is, before, at an early stage of, and way down deep the global crisis – and with a sample that is rather representative along several dimensions that previous studies have indicated relevant to assess the magnitude of citizens’ disaffection towards the EU. Specifically, three key dichotomies are taken into consideration here – that is, being a founding/new member of the EU; being a deeply or scarcely affected country by the economic recession; and being a traditionally pro/anti Europe state. As known, descriptive analyses of the kind proposed here cannot tell us why specific trends exist. Yet, being aware of their existence it is the first and crucial step to investigate the trends themselves. Besides, some preliminary hypotheses regarding the phenomenon under analysis will be introduced in the concluding part of the article.

Sharing the burden in a free riders’ land: The EU refugee policy in the views of public opinion and politicians
Francesco Olmastroni (olmastroni3@unisi.it), Linda Basile (basile7@unisi.it)
AbstractThe last ten years have been characterised by an unprecedented migration crisis. Since 2007, the news media reported stories of migrant shipwrecks and people rescued in the Mediterranean Sea. There are hundreds of thousands of entries every year in Europe, mostly asylum seekers who arrive illegally via the main routes of the Mediterranean and the Eastern border countries. The crisis has also revealed the limits of the Dublin regime, according to which the country of arrival is responsible for the asylum application. In this context, new divisions have emerged within the EU. On the one side, countries of first arrival, such as Italy, Greece and Hungary, are currently under pressure; at the same time, these countries often do not ensure fair and open system of asylum application. On the other side, migrants avoid fingerprinting and registration in the country of arrival and try to go to other favoured destination countries (e.g. Germany, Sweden), which, as a result, are called upon to deal with an increasing number of applications. Finally, a third group of countries reacted to these tensions by building fences (e.g. Hungary, Austria, Macedonia) or refusing to accept migrants under the EU quota system (e.g. Poland). Following the continuous flow of migrants, in 2015 the EC presented the Agenda on Migration to address the crisis in the Mediterranean; the EU also proposed a relocation plan, but no consensus on quotas has been reached yet. The policy solutions proposed by the EU posed a trade-off to Member States: the EU refugee policy proposes to give help to countries under pressure, but this requires burden sharing among all EU member states and a limitation of their national sovereignty. Against this scenario, this paper investigates whether there are divisions among EU member states on the EU refugee policy. While exploring the attitudes of public opinion, businesspeople and political elites in comparative perspective, the paper examines whether and to what extent these actors are likely to support or oppose the EU refugee policies, notwithstanding its implication for national sovereignty. Based on the results of a survey conducted within the EUENGAGE project, the paper explores the patterns of convergence (or divergence) on some policies of burden sharing among ten EU countries both at the public and elite level. The ultimate goal of this study is to provide insights on whether the path to a common EU refugee policy is likely to be smooth or troubled.

The EU Polity Beyond ‘Conventional Statecraft’
Furio Stamati (furio.stamati@eui.eu)
AbstractIn 1991, Andrew Moravcsik dubbed European integration as the product of ‘national interests and conventional statecraft’. In post-crisis EU, there is mounting evidence of conflicting national interests, but the case for statecraft is far more dubious. Most commentators explain the current European malaise in terms of a lack of political leadership, without specifying what kind of change the latter should bring about. Others speak of the inadequacy of supranational polity-building, but without indicating who should take (better) care of it. So, no one knows where and to what avail statecraft might be found. Is this time-honoured notion still meaningful for European integration? Should it be somehow re-specified, now that the prospect of a federal Europe seems as distant as ever? And, if so, how can one recognise it empirically? What kind of Europe is meant to be “crafted” and by whom? This author argues that the classic concept of statecraft is still relevant to the study of EU-level polity-building, once it is amended with a view to the challenges of today. The present paper contributes to the scholarly debate an original neo-Weberian framework. The latter revolves around the concept of Member-statecraft, which is meant to capture the peculiar type of “unconventional” statecraft that has taken root within the EU. The goals, functions, tasks and arenas of contemporary Member-statecraft are discussed in order to assess its problems and prospects. This conceptual elaboration is grounded in a qualitative historical analysis of recent trends in European politics, mostly based on a variety of secondary sources, but also on survey data. Against this backdrop, the article specifies a first set of conditions under which Member-statecraft can maximise its polity-building potential. (The paper is written in the framework of the ERC project REScEU, led by Maurizio Ferrera at the University of Milan. The author looks forward to the development of synergies with the EUNGAGE project, as indicated by the panel chair)

Chairs: Francesco Marangoni

Disentangling the complexity of the rotating Council presidency’s agenda: long-term trends and causes of variation in issue salience
Auste Vaznonyte (auste.vaznonyte@unimi.it)
AbstractThe permanent president of the European Council and high-politics issues discussed therein have overshadowed the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU since the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force. Yet, the decision-making process on the ministerial level represents a significant part of the EU politics. In this regard, this paper aims to address the importance of the Council of the EU by focusing on its rotating chair. The element of rotation and country-specific factors imply variation in salience attached to issues at the Council level, which eventually leads to policy punctuations. Institutional changes adopted in the past decades have greatly circumscribed the presidency’s agenda-shaping powers and, hereby, its room for manoeuvre. A joint presidency programme idea and a transfer of certain duties to the permanent positions were expected to reconcile cross-country differences and ensure policy continuity within the Council. Regardless of the latter institutional changes and formal behavioural rules applied to the chair, the institution retains its element of diversity, which is reflected in variations of issue salience across time. Based on the original hand-coded dataset of the rotating presidency programmes in 1997-2017, cross-sectional quantitative text analysis reveals that certain policies, e.g. international affairs or macroeconomics, present a jointly acknowledged importance of these topics, subsequently receiving the highest shares of attention throughout the years. However, the majority of policies, such as social or migration issues, exhibit moderate or even substantial punctuations in a long-term perspective. In this context, they present an exposure towards two possible effects: either significant EU-level political developments or an attempt to europeanise domestically sensitive questions. This longitudinal analysis is therefore the first attempt to perform cross-sectional analysis of issue salience attached by rotating chairs in their work programmes. This research will further contribute to the existing state of the art not only by presenting a time-series analysis of topic salience, but also by examining agenda-shaping powers of the rotating chair, which were scarcely addressed in the post-Lisbon era.

The evaluation of European digital policies as a tool of neoliberal governance of the state. Assessing the construction of the Digital Agenda for Europe and its implications for member states.
Diego Giannone (diego.giannone@unicampania.it), Mauro Santaniello (msantaniello@unisa.it)
AbstractLaunched in May 2010, the Digital Agenda for Europe was aimed at boosting Europe’s economy by delivering sustainable economic and social benefits from a digital single market. The challenges posed by the European Commission (EC) to member states were several, from infrastructural to regulatory issues, and involved social, political and economic aspects. The paper aims to analyse a specific aspect of this complex and multi-faceted process, namely the way in which the EU evaluates its digital policies. In doing so, we will focus on the political dimension of evaluation rather than on methodological issues. Drawing on previous studies arguing the political relevance of measurement, we maintain that the indicators and instruments that the EC produces and uses to assess the implementation of the Digital Agenda by member states constitute relevant political issues, as they shape the digital vision the EU aims to promote, and affect the transformation of states’ polity and policies. In line with perspectives emphasizing the influence of neoliberalism in the construction of the EU, we hypothesize that the implementation of digital Europe follows the same trend. Hence, the analysis of the indicators could reveal what understanding of digital Europe the EU maintains and advances. Relevant issues are: What political, social and economic aspects do indicators take into account? And what weight do they assign to each dimension of the complex process named “Digital Agenda for Europe”? The analysis could also highlight what transformation in states’ polity and policies indicators produce through their governmentality power. In the first section the paper introduces the historical background and theoretical framework behind the rise of neoliberalism and the proliferation of measuring instruments. Section no. 2 deepens the political dimension of evaluation and unfolds its connection with neoliberalization. Then the paper focuses on the Digital Agenda for Europe. Based both on a content and discourse analysis, we propose an in-depth inquiry of three datasets that the EC has created over time: the Digital Agenda Key Indicators, which illustrate some key dimensions of the European information society; the Lead indicators for DG Connect policy priorities; and the Digital Economy and Society Index, a composite index that summarises 30 relevant indicators on Europe’s digital performance. The paper ends with some remarks about the kind of digital Europe promoted by the indicators

Il federalismo e l'Unione Europea
Giovanna Pugno Vanoni (pugnovanoni@tiscali.it)
AbstractUna valutazione del ruolo del federalismo nel processo di integrazione europea lungo sessant’anni di storia, a partire dai Trattati di Roma ad oggi. In generale, si intende con federalismo un complesso di forze come opposto al sovranismo. Si pone particolare attenzione alle idee, alla loro circolazione e alle personalità degli attori. Si darà spazio ai movimenti federalisti nei diversi paesi e al loro operato. L’obiettivo è individuare i fattori che hanno favorito lo sviluppo in senso federale, da un lato, e quelli che, per contro, vi si sono opposti. Lo studio vuole costituire un primo campo di analisi, che possa, a propria volta, suggerire promettenti e puntuali sentieri di ricerca comparata. 29 maggio 2017 Giovanna Pugno Vanoni E-mail: pugnovanoni@tiscali.it

To Renew or Not to Renew? Unintended Consequences and the EU-ACP Partnership Agreement
Maurizio Carbone (maurizio.carbone@glasgow.ac.uk)
AbstractThe Cotonou Partnership Agreement (CPA), which has been governing relations between the European Union (EU) and 79 countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) since 2000, is due to expire in February 2020. A number of signals, such as the adoption of competing policy frameworks in the areas of trade (with strengthened focus on sub-regions) and security (with continental actors such as the African Union as key interlocutor) coupled with the lack of interest of some Member States and declining interest of traditional ACP champions, seemed to suggest that the EU would no longer be interested in renewing its partnership with the ACP countries, at least not in its current format. The adoption of a Green Paper by the European Commission in November 2016 that proposed a renewed EU-ACP partnership consisting of a common foundation applicable to all ACP countries and three separate regional partnerships caught everybody by surprise. This paper looks at the key forces behind the EU’s change of preferences and, ultimately, the EU’s proposal for negotiating with the ACP group for the post-2020. Specifically, it shows how such changes could be seen, to a great extent, as the unintended consequence of three factors: the rise of a number of emerging powers with norms and values that are alternative to those of the EU (thus requiring the preservation of the CPA acquis on democracy and human rights); the need to ensure a general framework so as not to re-open the highly controversial Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs); and the one-off successful EU-ACP cooperation in the international arena in the context of the Paris Agreement on climate change.