Sisp Conference 2019

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

Managers: Roberto Di Quirico (diquirico@unica.it), Mattia Guidi (mattia.guidi@unisi.it)

Friday 13th September 2019
  Monastero - Aula Pianterreno 09.00-10.45
  Studium 6 - Aula 1-C1 09.00-10.45, 11.15-13.00
  Monastero - Aula Pianterreno 11.15-13.00
  Donato Valli - Aula B 11.15-13.00
  Donato Valli - Aula 7 14.00-15.45
  Donato Valli - Aula B 14.00-15.45
  Sperimentale Tabacchi - Aula SP3 14.00-15.45
  Donato Valli - Aula 9 14.00-15.45

Chairs: Roberto Di Quirico

Discussants: Federica Cacciatore

EU foreign policy actorness in times of crises
Elena Baracani
AbstractThis contribution analyzes how EU foreign policy actorness was shaped by the different crises the EU faced during the last institutional cycle (2014-19) in order to evaluate whether it is better interpreted through the lenses of differentiated integration rather than disintegration. In order to evaluate the main EU foreign policy decisions, it is proposed to adopt an approach, which combines more actor-oriented factors, stemming from the theoretical perspectives of bureaucratic politics and the new institutionalism applied to EU foreign policy, with structural factors, starting from the notion of ‘opportunity’ used to analyze EU actorness.

Assessing differentiated integration of core state powers in the European Union: evidence from EU legislation
Marta Migliorati
AbstractThe more the European Union (EU) architecture and functioning are shaken by a variety of crises, the more EU scholars and policy makers are keen to look for sensible strategies able to keep the EU integrated, given the tangible threat of an unstoppable disintegration process. ‘Differentiated integration’ has progressively become one of the key concepts related to this debate: in particular, among the plethora of possible ways to fight disintegration, ´´smart´ differentiation has been proposed as a possible avenue to avoid the destruction of a decades-long project. But, ultimately, how has diversity been integrated so far? In particular, how has the EU approached the integration of policy areas subjected to high political contestation, what are the consequences of that, and what should be eventually changed? In order to address these issues, in this paper I undertake a careful assessment of EU laws impact upon the exercise of national sovereignty among member states in areas of ‘core state powers´, including money and fiscal affairs, defence and foreign policy, migration & internal security. By resorting to textual analysis through a manual coding of a sample of primary and secondary legislation, I provide empirical evidence of how differentiated integration of core state powers has unfolded overtime, and the extent to which legislative provisions substantially affect national sovereignty in these specific policy areas. Moreover, I develop a set of hypotheses accounting for observed variation and propose a research agenda.

The EU, Russia, and China in the Western Balkans: challenges and prospects for European Union's foreign policy.
Carlotta Mingardi
AbstractThis paper aims to analyse the EU’s foreign policy challenges in the region of the Western Balkans, specifically in Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina, as old and relatively new international actors such as Russia and China are re-orienting their foreign policy measures and/or significantly entering what was conceived, since the 2000s, a ‘EU area of influence’. While over the past years the EU faced the consequences of the economic crisis of 2008, which among other things contributed to the rise of anti-establishment and anti-EU movements, it also entered a situation of stall in the process of enlargement. However, this slowing down of the process and the lack of unity from EU member states in creating a common foreign policy towards the region, created space for international actors such as Russia and China (among others) to strengthen and/or further develop significant economic and political relationships with the local governments. This contributed, locally, to exacerbate existing problems of lack of accountability and personalisation of politics (Bassuener, 2019), and provided incentives for local governments to move away from the conditionality’s approach further weakening the influence and credibility of the EU in the region. Starting from a neoclassical realist approach (Booth 2007, Lobell, et al. 2009, Donelli 2019) and drawing from the literature on regionalism, the paper first reviews the role played by EU institutions, Russia and China in the Western Balkans since the end of the ‘90s, and then proceeds in the analysis of the main changes occurred during the outgoing EU legislature and the EU responses to specific issues, such the renewed interest in a ‘credible enlargement towards the western Balkans’, the response to the ‘Balkan Route’ and the 2019 EC communication on EU-China relations. Finally, the paper tries to give an account of the challenges posed by the Belt and Road Initiative and by the strengthened Russian role in the energy infrastructure sector in Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina (with its consequent political cleavage) for the future of the EU project and the prospects for regional stability, the main question driving the research be summarized as: what can the EU still offer to its south-eastern neighbourhood, and how should it move if it wishes to re-confirm its role in the region? This work insert itself in the framework of a three year PhD's research project currently at initial-intermediate stage.

Chairs: Roberto Di Quirico

Discussants: Elena Baracani

When the EU takes the field. Innovative forms of regulatory enforcement in the fisheries sector
Federica Cacciatore, Mariolina Eliantonio
AbstractOne of the main weaknesses of the EU and causes of citizens’ disaffection, is its alleged scarce effectiveness in achieving its targets among various policy sectors. This, in turn, is due, among other reasons, to member states’ (MS) lack of compliance or uneven implementation performance, given the traditional share of tasks, according to which the EU institutions adopt regulations, while the MS implement them and enforce them when compliance is not full. After many and reiterated actions by the EU, aiming at fostering better and more complete compliance to EU law through soft measures and incentives to MS, another trend is emerging, by which the EU is gradually taking on direct enforcement competences in a growing number of policy sectors. Moreover, the ways through which the EU is taking the field in the enforcing phase are many and diverse, ranging from direct full enforcement powers (Drake, Smith 2016; van Rijsbergen, Foster 2017) to differently shared and networked roles with the MS and the other actors involved (van Der Heijden 2016). In such evolving governance. A crucial role is played by EU agencies, established ad hoc or attributed new tasks to deal with enforcement issues (Scholten, Luchtman 2017). Arguing that this verticalization of the enforcement powers is a trend (Scholten 2017; Scholten, Luchtman 2017) supposedly involving an increasing number of policy sectors, we take into account the fisheries sector. Among the Common Fisheries Policy, indeed, this phenomenon is already in force and displays a variety of new configurations of powers, depending on the enforcement mechanisms at stake (Cacciatore, Eliantonio 2017; 2019), in order to understand if different forms of verticalized enforcement can be associated with different sub-phases of the enforcement process (inspections, reporting, data sharing, sanctions etc.). We then conclude by analysing the main concerns raised in terms of political and judicial accountability when it comes to a multilevel enforcement governance, drawing evidence from the fisheries sector. Main references: F. Cacciatore, M. Eliantonio (2017), ‘Fishing in troubled waters? Shared enforcement of the Common Fisheries Policy and accountability gaps’, in Scholten, Luchtman (eds.), 168-194. F. Cacciatore, M. Eliantonio (2019), ‘Networked enforcement in the Common Fisheries Policy through data sharing: is there room left for traditional accountability paradigms?’, European Journal of Risk Regulation, forthcoming. S. Drake, M. Smith (eds.) (2016), New Directions in the Effective Enforcement of EU Law and Policy, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar. M. Scholten (2017), ‘Mind the trend! Enforcement of EU law has been moving to ‘Brussels’’, Journal of European Public Policy, 24(9), 1348-1366. M. Scholten, M. Luchtman (eds.) (2017), Law Enforcement by EU Authorities. Implications for Political and Judicial Accountability, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar. J. van Der Heijden (2016), ‘The Long, But Promising, Road from Deterrence to Networked Enforcement’, in Drake, Smith (eds.), 77-104. M. van Rijsbergen, J. Foster (2017), ‘‘Rating’ ESMA’s accountability: ‘AAA’ status’, in Scholten, Luchtman (eds.), 53-81.

Reclaiming the European Union. Europeanism today
Giovanna Pugno Vanoni
AbstractWhat is europeanism today? In which extent could it help facing the most critical challenge the EU has to face nowadays? Starting from the boook of McCormick (Europeanism 2010), the paper focuses on a red line of values that played a significant role in european history. The Making of Europe. An Introduction to the History of European Unity (Christopher Dawson) was written in 1932 and points to the role of Christianity in it. Focusing on Italy from 1948 and following the scheme of the book Sovranità o barbarie. Il ritorno della questione nazionale (Fazi e Mitchell 2018), the paper hints to some of the most critical challenges Italy and the EU has to face today: the impossibility to make the European Economic and Monetary Union work within the context of existing rules. Unemployment and social exclusion, on the one hand, and the defence of external borders, on the other hand, are better managed in a context where ‘United in diversity’ acts as a leading principle and where europeanism helps the making of a sovereignity at both national and European level. Giovanna Pugno Vanoni Milan, May the 19th 2019 Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Mail: giovanna.pugno@unicatt.it

Making the most of the EU internal mobility - Romanian citizens’ migration to the UK in the context of Brexit, a race against time
Andrada Petrache
AbstractSummary There is no doubt that the EU is going through challenging times; a member state is negotiating its departure for the first time, several others are speaking with increasingly Eurosceptic or illiberal voices and its institutions are still too disconnected from the EU citizen, so they are constantly being blamed for democratic deficiency. But in a context in which the UK, the departing member state, is calling for the end of freedom of movement, there is one case that goes beyond the answers to the Eurobarometer in demonstrating that internal mobility is what Europeans value most out of the EU’s achievements. While the overall EU27 have seen a decrease in migration towards the UK after the 2016 Brexit Referendum, the Romanian case presents itself as an atypical one, going against time and against the European trend. European migration towards the UK has reached a 5 year low in 2017, but one cannot say the same about the Romanian case, as the Romanians have overpassed the Irish and became the second largest non-British nationality group in the UK. This paper looks at the extent to which Brexit impacted EU27 migration flows to the UK. It explains the reasoning behind EU citizens’ attraction for internal mobility, with a focus on the unforeseen attraction of the UK, in the detriment of other EU member states, even in the context of Brexit. And to this regard, it treats the Romanian positive migration as a case study, which has been described by official data as atypical in the European context, and which seems to be marked by a determination to make the most of the freedom of movement towards the UK, in an uncertain race against time. While researching this outstanding migration phenomenon, this paper explained a tendency that seems to have defied all official expectations (whether we are talking about the Romanian, British or European authorities), who were forecasting a decrease in the number of Romanian migrants in the UK in the uncertain context created by the Brexit negotiations. It employed both migration and behavioural economics theories to explain this as a decision under uncertainty and to identify the various individual reasons, as well as the general pattern that convinced so many Romanians to leave the status quo and migrate towards the UK. Research Project Diaspora has been at the forefront of Brexit negotiations, as a priority topic at the beginning and then as an area of negotiation which needed constant attention and reassurance, as the two negotiating parties were redesigning the framework for the UK’s exit from the EU and for the future relationship. In Romania, diaspora has been a key theme on the national public agenda ever since the country’s accession to the EU, when intra-EU mobility allowed for the establishment of important Romanian communities in Italy, Spain, Germany or the UK. Although not the largest Romanian diaspora in the EU, the Romanian diaspora in the UK has constantly been in the spotlight in the past years, due to Brexit and its associated campaigns and negotiations. The Romanian diaspora, although a highly fragmented [SINATTI, G.] “imagined community” [ANDERSON, B.], is an entity that sees many requests made in its name, both by its members and by the Romanian political actors. There is much debate about the responsibility a home country has towards its diaspora, as there is definitely a certain level of responsibility that the home state shares for its citizens who are living abroad, as Eva Østergaard-Nielsen explains. So one ought not to be surprised by the Romanian authorities’ involvement, alongside the British and European, in communication campaigns and events tackling the future status of the Romanian citizens in the UK. Nor is one to be surprised by the common front that the Romanian authorities have had on this topic (despite serious divergences and almost no dialogue on other political topics, be them domestic or foreign) and by their decision to push for this as a priority topic within the negotiations from the very beginning. This is the context in which the paper explains the migration flow, by employing various explanations from the relevant literature, be them economic, political, personal, or maybe even connected to the British “soft power” [NYE, J]. The decision to migrate is treated and analysed as a “decision under uncertainty” [ANDERSON B.], in which the decision maker knows the alternatives and the expected outcomes (as identified by using the theories of migration), but is unaware of the probabilities corresponding to the outcomes. This approach is justified by the uncertain context in which the Romanian decided to migrate towards the UK, as the 2017 agreement on citizens’ rights that has been included in the Withdrawal Agreement rejected by the British Parliament laid under the caveat that ‘nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”, and there has been constant talk about a no deal scenario throughout the two years of negotiations. Methodology This exploratory study used qualitative analysis to extend the knowledge on the motivations behind the particular Romanian migration case, as well as behind the EU internal mobility overall. 1.The paper used literature analysis to explain the Romanian migration towards the UK, despite the uncertainty surrounding Brexit. Behavioural economics decision theories have been the starting point, as the decision to migrate has been analysed as a decision under uncertainty. Migration theories have then been used to identify the motivation behind the decision and the expected outcomes for each option: maintain the status quo and remain in Romania or migrate (with the expected outcomes for this option being summarised in a decision tree). This theoretical framework has been applied to the Romanian economic and political reality of the last two years, while also considering the changes in political and media discourse in the UK throughout this period. 2.Having drawn the context in which the decision has been taken, the research moved into a more empirical area and made use of qualitative online interviews to test the theoretical framework and identify both general and specific reasons that determined them to migrate towards the UK in this rather volatile context from a citizens’ rights perspective. Online interviews have been applied to a sample of Romanians who have migrated towards the UK after June 2016 and although the results are somewhat limited from a statistical point of view, they bring important contributions to this exploratory study. Results touch on the reasons that convinced the Romanian respondents to migrate and to choose the UK as their new home, but also look at their future plans to remain in the UK, look into onward migration or return to Romania. Outcomes 1.The paper analysed and explained an outstanding migration flow in the European context, employing both behavioural (decision theory) and migration theories. As such, the phenomenon of the Romanian migration towards the UK in the context of Brexit has been analysed as a “decision under uncertainty” [PETERSON, M] (understood extensively, in both its risk and ignorance dimensions). This decision was then explained by using the migration theories, that offered explanations for a decision to give up on the status quo and migrate towards the UK. Various factors have been taken into consideration when applying these theories to the specific case of Romanian migration: the economic situation and the political context in their host state, personal reasons, including family reunification. Special consideration has also been given to the uncertain context in which the decision has been made: the difference in British political discourse pre and post Referendum or the media emphasis on the successful stories of the Romanians is the UK. 2.The paper identified the specific reasons that laid behind the disregard for all the Brexit uncertainty and the Romanian decision to migrate towards the UK after the 2016 Referendum. Romanians differentiated themselves from the rest of the EU27 citizens and showed little or no regard for the alarming scenarios promoted by both the media and political actors that determined the rest of the Europeans to be more cautious. Economic reasons were widely mentioned, yet there were other notable arguments present as well: family reunification and familiarity with the language and culture. Conclusion and Recommendations The findings of this exploratory paper go beyond a national case study. They speak of the impact of an ongoing process that would certainly contribute to the reform of the European project as we know it and reflect reality behind pompous and sensational headlines. Furthermore, they can easily act as useful insight into how the EU can further develop and promote its internal mobility of individuals and make the other EU27 member states as appealing a destination as the UK currently is, even after the latter’s departure from the Union. The first departure of a member state, the manner and terms under which it is being done and the extent to which it influences the EU citizens are all aspects that contain valuable and complex lessons for the future, especially at such a crossroad moment in the history of the EU. Bibliography European Commission, Standard Eurobarometer 90, Autumn 2018 European Commission, TF50 (2017) 19 – Commission to EU 27, 8 December 2017 Office for National Statistics, Statistical bulletin: Population of the UK by country of birth and nationality: 2017 ANDERSON, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 1983 NYE, Joseph S., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, Public Affairs New York, 2004 PETERSON, Martin, An Introduction to Decision Theory, Cambridge University Press, 2009, New York SINATTI, Giulia; HORST, Cindy, Migrants as agents of development: Diaspora enga

Chairs: Igor Guardiancich, Mattia Guidi

Discussants: Igor Guardiancich

A sectoral approach to the politics of State aid in the European Union. An analysis of the European automotive industry
Marco Schito
AbstractGovernment support to business through selective subsidisation is historically common practice. Governments use subsidies to rescue firms in dire straits, to promote innovative fields or to achieve important policy goals. In spite of a non-negligible literature on the determinants of subsidy spending, scholarship has mostly overlooked sectoral approaches to explain variation in aid allocations. A sectoral approach can provide useful insights about State-business relations that macro-analyses cannot. To help fill this gap, this paper follows a recent shift in the literature by exploring the political determinants of State aid in a key sector of the European economy, the automotive industry. This sector plays a pivotal role in the functioning of many national economies, both in terms of value added and employment, as is also shown by the relaxation in 2009-10 of the rules on State aid to the industry during the economic crisis. The paper analyses State aid in 16 Member States of the European Union (EU) where an automotive industry is present between 1992 and 2011. The findings suggest that domestic governments are responsive to business's demands, and point to the importance of helping a key industry in terms of electoral competition.

Macroeconomic Policy Coordination and Social Outcomes - the Case of Pension Adequacy in the Euro Area
Igor Tkalec
AbstractThe main objective of the 2011 EU governance reform was to strengthen fiscal and macroeconomic policy coordination. Hence, the European Semester – an annual economic policy coordination cycle was introduced. The reform revisited existing fiscal policy coordination mechanism namely the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) and introduced the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP). Both mechanisms consist of relevant indicators set up to monitor member states’ fiscal and macroeconomic performance. Each of the indicators has a threshold value determined ex-ante with which member states are not legally, but politically, obliged to comply. In case of non-compliance euro area countries can be subject to sanctions. Within the socio-economic axis of the Semester coordination, strong trends have been observed. In particular, the Semester has become “socialised” by including social policy matters in its macroeconomic and fiscal coordination procedures. More importantly, however, social concerns have been subjugated under the economic ones notably fiscal consolidation and macroeconomic stability. Consequently, economic goals have been pursued at the expense of the social ones. One of the relevant social concerns that is on the one hand, well integrated in the Semester, and is, on the other hand, a persistent policy challenge in the EU member states is pension adequacy. In his vein, this article addresses the following research question: under which conditions does the compliance with the macroeconomic policy coordination thresholds improve levels of pension adequacy in the euro area? In other words, the article aims to identify policy mixes that are conducive to improving pension adequacy within the Semester’s governance framework. To answer the research question, the article employs fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) as the main method. The results show that, within the Semester, there are two opposing policy mixes – fiscal and macroeconomic driven - that are sufficient (conducive) for improving pension adequacy levels. While the fiscal mix is based on non-compliance with the Semester’s thresholds, the macroeconomic one presupposes compliance. This opens the question of the compatibility of the economic policy coordination with social outcomes and exposes its potentially detrimental effects.

Public-Private regulatory partnership in the making of the European Capital Markets Union
Giuseppe Montalbano
Abstract“To improve the financing of our economy, we should further develop and integrate capital markets": with these words the candidate to the presidency of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, presented a major pillar of his political agenda to bring the EU out of the sluggish growth and deflationary environment which threatened its prospects of economic development and social legitimacy. As soon as elected President of the Commission, Juncker followed up on his commitment with the project of a 'Capital Markets Union', including it in the same title of the Directorate General for financial services. Such a Capital Markets Union (CMU) promised to unlock financial market-based funding to the real economy, and in particular to SMEs, so to offer alternative funding sources in a situation of shortage of bank lending. The CMU signaled a remarkable shift in the EU financial regulatory approach that emerged after the 2007/08 global financial crisis. While the post-crisis years saw the EU policy-makers committed in a regulatory tightening of financial markets and deleveraging, the plan for a revitalization of capital markets signaled a renewed EU effort to boost its financial players. The emerging literature on the CMU variously agrees in considering it a return to at least a less distrustful and more dialoguing stance between the European public authorities and financial industry interests. Some authors explained this changed approach by pointing at the regulators’ structural dependency on the smooth functioning of financial markets, while others highlighted the renewed convergence of ideas and goals between EU policy-makers and large banks. In line with these arguments, in his seminal work, Dorn originally conceptualized the CMU as an unusual case of “cohabitation” between public and private actors in financial policy-making, departing from both an apparently arm-length post-crisis regulatory style and the same pre-crisis approach. Somehow all these studies addressed the structural determinants and the ideational effects of such a regulatory partnership between key supranational policy-makers and financial market incumbents to explain the CMU rationale and its policy contents. Yet, none of them responded to a crucial underlying issue: how did this co-habitation concretely materialize and prove to be successful in the run up to the CMU agenda? In what forms did the EU policy-makers and financial industry interests meet together and influence each other? Though assuming it as underlying concept, the literature on CMU still lacks of both an in-depth empirical analysis and a theoretical definition of the public-private regulatory partnership. By building on the recent studies on the CMU and the Critical IPE literature, the aim of this contribution is thus to investigate the determinants, features and actual emergence of such a mutual conditioning between public and private actors in the EU financial regulation. My argument is that key segments of the EU financial markets and their representative associations were able to advance their preferences by shaping them as a solution to the policy-makers’ increasingly pressing problems of sluggish growth and insufficient funding to the real economy. Some key corporate interest groups presented themselves as regulatory partners in devising policy solutions with the public regulators and politicians for the general interest of ensuring economic growth in the whole EU. On their part, the European policy-makers asked for advice and promoted business initiatives able to unlock market-based financing in a context of bank lending shortage and restrained fiscal capacity at the national level under the austerity-based response to the sovereign debt crisis. Under the structural pressures of the EMU and dominant post-crisis EU approach in the economic governance, the demands and goals of key European financial industry sectors and policy-makers met together, leading to concrete public/private partnerships at the basis of the policy priorities set by the CMU Action Plan. This contribution thus aims at enriching the theoretical and empirical debate on the CMU by focusing on four representative case-studies, covering a set of relevant policy initiatives within the CMU agenda. The latter refers to critical financial market segments, like the covered bond markets, the venture capitals, and the private placements. The paper is structured as follows. In the first section, I review the existing literature on the CMU, by highlighting its merits and shortcomings, building on the latter to introduce an overall theoretical conceptualization of the private/public regulatory partnerships. Then, I present the research design, laying down the main expectations of this study. The subsequent sections are dedicated to the empirical analysis of the three selected case studies and the related testing of the research expectations. In the conclusions, I evaluate the results of the empirical analysis with the initial expectations and the overall definition of public/private regulatory partnership here provided.

Chairs: Igor Guardiancich, Mattia Guidi

Discussants: Mattia Guidi

Assessing and measuring the evolution of the fiscal policy of the EU: a comparative federal analysis
Tiziano Zgaga
AbstractThis paper examines the evolution of the fiscal policy of the EU through the dichotomy between two instruments of core state power integration: fiscal regulation and fiscal capacity. It tries to find out how these instruments are linked to the institutions that perform them. The starting hypotheses are that 1) in the EU, fiscal regulation is strong and fiscal capacity is weak; and 2) the institutions representing the Member States (MS) at central level, particularly the Council, are very influential in both instruments, thus making the EU’s fiscal policy highly intergovernmental. The paper first operationalizes the two instruments through a system of deductive categories or codes. Then, based on a qualitative text analysis of fiscal policy legislation, it qualitatively assesses the evolution of fiscal regulation and fiscal capacity in the period from 2009 to 2012, and quantitatively measures their strength (degree of intensity). Afterwards, it examines how much, and in which way, the institutions representing the MS are involved in each instrument of fiscal policy. Following the same methodology, the findings are compared to a federal state (Germany) and a federal union (Switzerland). This enables to assess the nature of the EU’s fiscal policy and its evolution over time through the creation of three indices: the Index of Fiscal Regulation, the Index of Fiscal Capacity and the Index of Units’ Involvement. Based on the values of the indices, the results confirm the hypotheses. The EU has a strong fiscal regulation and a weak fiscal capacity. Both are strongly influenced by the institution(s) representing the units (second chamber), with limited involvement of the institution representing the centre (first chamber, in this case the European Parliament). In Germany and Switzerland, fiscal policy work differently. In conclusion, the EU’s peculiarity of being a “second-chamber governance” is true also for fiscal policy.

The ‘Bite’ of European Institutions’ Conditionality: What Effects in Practice?
Mattia Guidi, Igor Guardiancich
AbstractSince the global financial crisis, both through the European Semester (ES) – launched in 2011 to enhance the coordination of macroeconomic policies among EU member states – as well as through the financial assistance programmes administered by the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, most member states of the European Union have been experiencing varying levels of external pressure to reform. The conditionality exerted by European institutions has attracted significant scholarly attention. In the realm of pensions, the focus of this paper, a number of quantitative contributions have explored the nature of Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs) as well as the reasons for which the member states react to European conditionality (see Guidi and Guardiancich, 2018; Guardiancich and Guidi, 2019). What has been left unexplained is whether the member states effectively follow the substance contained in the recommendations given by European institutions. In order to test the coherence between European indications and national policy choices, this article combines two original datasets covering the 2011-2018 period. The considerable richness in detail goes well beyond existing data gathering and assessments. The statistical analysis shows that, despite several well-defined caveats, coherence between CSRs and domestic pension reforms is greater than previously calculated, thereby lending further credence to the ongoing supranationalization of pension policy in Europe.

“Il triangolo no, non lo avevo considerato”: European Economic Governance as Intervening Variable in shape Industrial Relations Response to Digitalization in the Italian Retail Sector from a multi-level perspective
Arianna Marcolin
AbstractTechnological innovations are altering labour market and the dynamics which regulate Industrial Relations. Technological changes lead to new management model, new forms of cooperation, consultation and concertation between institutions and interests’ groups. The assumption is that the introduction of new technologies to collective bargaining depends on the context they are embedded. Thus, different typologies of institutions from national to European ones and different level of actors power resources shape differently collective bargaining response to digitalization. Hence, technological innovation should be read through the lenses of path dependency, meaning that technology will not determine the future of Industrial Relations per se, but it represents one of the causes, together with Post-materialist values, job flexicurization, lean-chain production and liberalization, that influence Industrial Relations development. Over the last decades, the effectiveness of trade unions has been disputed: liberalization of labour market and the consequently trend towards flexicurity, with increasing number of atypical contracts, have changed labour welfare provisions and diminished trade unions power, that mostly represent elderly male workers, not able to be attractive for young cohorts. In fact, some scholars define trade unions as a monolithic institution. However, in Italy the 2008 financial crisis and labour market deregulation promulgated by the Troika shook the situation up; social actors seem to be gaining their voice again to the point that some researchers define unions as malleable enough to adapt and re-organize themselves in order to product outcome aligned to workers’ expectations. Given this situation, the present contribution addresses the following question: does the New European Economic Governance, that has downsized the role of trade unions in wage bargaining, intervenes in order to foster negotiation and strategies on issues related to digitalization (i.e. e-commerce, processing data and omni-chanel), for homogenizing the effect of technology throughout the European labour market, intensifying cross-borders solidarity and empowering trade union action specifically in the retail sector both at European and Italian level? Thus, the aim of this paper is to analyse the retail sector both at European and Italian level and the response of actors involved, after the implementation of the NEEG, regarding the effects of digitalization on workforce rights and organization. Moreover, the purpose is to delineate the institutional strategies, in particular at European level, that allows the retail sector to boost innovation and to support actors involved to handle the consequences of digitalization on business organization and workforce conditions, as well as the social actors proactive response vis-à-vis the changes that the retail sector has been experiencing in the last decade. In order to address the research question, the paper represents a literature review and analysis of official documents of the actual situation of industrial relations at national and European level for the retail sector, as well as interviews to social actors at the Italian level. This research sheds the light on a crucial sector significantly influenced by technological innovations and deeply shaped by the European Single Market, which alters both the structure and the regulatory framework.

Chairs: Edoardo Bressanelli

Discussants: Pierangelo Isernia

Issue voting in times of realignment
Giorgio Malet
AbstractNew political parties have an incentive to campaign on new issue dimensions to reap electoral gains. However, their strategy is successful only as far as voters’ positions on those new issues affect their voting choices. Traditional studies on issue voting in multi-party elections model vote choice as a comparison among utilities that a voter would derive from the policy offerings of distinct parties. Yet, we do not know under what conditions new issue dimensions enter this comparison or what choice set voters consider when they evaluate a new party. We argue that vote choice results from a comparison between voters’ preferred preexisting party and the new party on the new issue dimension, and we analyze when this comparison enters the voting calculus. We apply our theoretical framework to explain the role that preferences towards European integration have played in the rise of radical right parties in Western Europe. We test our argument on three waves of the European Election Studies. In a second step, we further explore the mechanism at work by focusing on panel data from Germany and the UK. Results show that issue voting is better understood as the result of comparative evaluations, and that the effect of voters’ preferences on newly introduced issues is conditional on voters’ perception of the new party’s positions. These findings contribute to a general theory of issue voting and improve our understanding of the micro-level mechanisms of current processes of political realignment.

The Valence Side of the EU: Advocating for National Interests in Europe
Luca Carrieri, Davide Angelucci
AbstractIn the last decades, many challenger parties have tried to mobilize a conflict on European integration, increasing their entrepreneurial efforts on the EU issues. In fact, the permissive consensus on integration policies has progressively vanished, with citizens expressing polarized attitudes towards the EU. As a consequence, the issue competition on European integration has been mainly conceived as a positional struggle, where voter/party preferences are ordered along a Pro-/-Anti-EU general dimension. However, some parties may be prone to deploy a different strategy, mobilizing valence aspects related to the EU. These strategies revolve around party competence in advocating for national interests at the EU level, which has been considered as a generally desired goal of domestic electorates. Relying on their claimed superior competence to defend national interests within the EU, parties adopt a valence frame on the EU to avoid divisions within their electorates. However, it is still unclear how much and whether the voters have electorally responded to EU valence issues. This paper advances the following research questions: Have EU valence issues affected electoral preferences? Have EU valence issues outweighed the EU positional ones in explaining the voting preferences? Which parties have been more likely to benefit from EU valence issues? To answer these questions, we use an innovative dataset, the Issue Competition Comparative Project (2017-2018), including information on voters’ attitudes on a number of issues. Most importantly, the dataset has tapped public opinion attitudes on both EU positional and valence issues in Italy and France. We employ regression analyses on a stacked data matrix, which allow us to test rival models and assess the impact of EU positional and valence issues on the propensity to vote. Finally, we evaluate which parties (mainstream vs challengers) have capitalized the most on EU valence issues.

The Persistence of Anti-European Integration Sentiments
Julia Schulte-Cloos
AbstractHas the pace of European integration "left behind" parts of the European citizenry? This study contributes to our understanding of anti-European sentiments by drawing attention to their historical persistence. Relying on an original dataset of historical municipality-level data entailing information on initial EU opposition during all EU accession referenda linked to data on current populist right success within the same geographical units (N ~ 23000), the study shows that the support for anti-European forces is rooted in a rejection of EU membership. By exploiting the within-regional variation of support for accession, it shows that those geographical districts that initially opposed accession to the European Union show significantly higher levels of anti-European challenger support than such districts that were favorable towards joining the European project. The results have implications for our understanding of anti-European sentiments across Europe, showing that the substantive opposition towards the EU pre-dates the progressing level of European integration.

Are business elites still an engine of European integration?
Nicolò Conti, Bruno Marino, Vincenzo Memoli
AbstractIn the paper, we study the attitudes of business elites on the prospects of EU economic integration. The crisis context has politicised the debate over EU economic governance stressing, in particular, the questions of the relationship between domestic and supranational authorities, and the degree of mutual solidarity between the member states. These crucial questions about economic governance have become more relevant in the dialogue between the member states and European institutions on the future of the EU. We investigate attitudes towards the future of European economic governance after the economic downturn of the past years, by examining the motivations of national business elites through their responses to a cross-national survey that was conducted in 2016. Are they still an engine of European integration?

Chairs: Nicolò Conti

Discussants: Simona Piattoni

Agenda-Setting under Pressure: The Influence of National Politics on the European Commission
Edoardo Bressanelli, Christel Koop, Christine Reh
AbstractThis contribution explores the impact of national (electoral) politics on the European Commission’s agenda-choices, with a focus on annual legislative priorities. Drawing from the literatures on politicisation, policy responsiveness and non-majoritarian institutions, we argue that the Commission uses its legislative agenda and (non) prioritisation to respond to political pressure from the national level. We argue that the Commission faces bottom-up pressure on its agenda; that bottom-up pressure emanates from national parties and governments as well as from electoral and mass Euroscepticism; and that the Commission perceives such pressure as both a policy-seeker and a survival-driven bureaucracy; bottom-up pressure emanates from national parties and governments, and from electoral and mass Euroscepticism. Both the pressure and the Commission’s incentive to respond, we suggest, increase with the domestic relevance and visibility of Europe and EU legislation; in turn, relevance and visibility increase with 1) high issue-salience for parties in national government; 2) rising levels of electoral and mass Euroscepticism; and 3) approaching national elections. We test our hypotheses on a new dataset including all European Commission priorities—as presented in its annual Work Programmes—from 1999 to 2016. Our analysis shows that the issue-salience of national parties in government is an important driver of the Commission’s agenda-priorities and increasingly so over time, and that high levels of mass Euroscepticism moderately constrain the activity of the EU’s executive. However, electoral support for Eurosceptic parties and election proximity do not influence the Commission’s agenda-setting significantly. Our analysis also shows that redistributive files are less likely to be prioritised; that the Commission does prioritise files expanding the EU’s competences as well as more complex legislative dossiers; and that prioritisation becomes more likely when the left-right distance grows between the co-legislators. These findings speak to the nascent debate about the EU’s multi-level politics, and shed light on policy responsiveness by non-majoritarian actors under salience and contestation.

Caught between the discourses? Eurosceptic discourse trajectories in Italy and their influence on mainstream parties
Tim Henrichsen
AbstractItaly, historically known as a pro-European bastion, has suffered severely from the still ongoing crises infecting the continent, flooding the Italian political landscape with strong anti-European sentiments of popular Eurosceptic parties. Austerity and the refugee crisis have shattered the Italian party system, leading to the downfall of the center-right and center-left. Exploiting the incoherent problem-solving capacities of the Italian political mainstream and the European Union itself, the two major Eurosceptic parties 5 Star Movement and the League have gained increasing popularity, mounting in their electoral victory in the Italian elections of 2018. How have party discourses on Europe unfolded? Did party positions change over the course of the crises years? Did the upswing in support for the M5S and LN lead to a contagion effect of Euroscepticism on their mainstream competitors? Or did Eurosceptic parties change their attitudes to attract an even wider portion of voters? Using a novel discourse network analytical (DNA) approach, my research highlights the divergences and convergences of Italian political party discourses on Europe. From 2013, when the 5 Star Movement gained a considerable number of votes in the national elections and the new League secretary Matteo Salvini fundamentally radicalized the party’s attitudes on Europe, until their government takeover in 2018, I trace Italian party competition on Europe that has paved the way for the success story of both Eurosceptic parties and the collapse of their mainstream opponents. The first preliminary results indicate an increasing polarization throughout the entire political party system, in which the League further hardened its Euroscepticism, therefore provoking position shifting, especially for Forza Italia. But also varying intensities of anti-European attitudes can be observed in the other mainstream parties, highlighting the underlying European dissent within all established parties. The 5 Star Movement, on the other hand, while flexibly flip-flopping positions, has rather tamed its overall hostility towards the EU.

Euroscepticism behind the victory of Eurosceptic parties in the 2018 Italian general election? Not quite like that
Nicola Maggini, Alessandro Chiaramonte
AbstractOn March 4, 2018 Italy went to the polls amidst an intense wave of anti-establishment sentiment. The parties that most contributed to, and capitalised from, this political climate were the Five Star Movement (M5S) and the Northern League (Lega), i.e. the challenger, populist parties. Given the Eurosceptic nature of the M5S and even more of the Lega (Emanuele, Maggini and Marino 2016), the election result has been regarded by many as a blow to Europe. However, while the victory of Eurosceptic parties in the 2018 election is a matter of fact, whether Euroscepticism has been one of the main reasons explaining it remains to be determined. Thus, the goal of this article is exactly to assess the role played by Euroscepticism in (the outcome of) the 2018 Italian general election. For this purpose, we will try to see how and to what extent the EU-related issues have been able to shape parties' strategies and voters' preferences. More specifically, we will be looking at, on the one hand, the emphasis given to them by the parties both in their manifestos and in their official Twitter feeds during the electoral campaign, and, on the other hand, the voters' preferences and priorities on those issues and, comparatively, on other issues.

Spitzenkandidaten 2.0: From Experiment to Routine in European Elections?
Thomas Christiansen
AbstractThe Lisbon Treaty ushered in a new mode of appointing the President of the European Commission, and the 2014 elections witnessed the introduction of the Spitzenkandidaten process through which European political parties and the European Parliament managed to wrest control over this appointment from the European Council. While having been successful in terms of the political outcome resulting from this inter-institutional rivalry in 2014, the academic assessment of the system led to mixed reviews, and from political and legal perspectives the process has remained controversial. Nevertheless, in the run-up to the 2019 elections, pan-European campaigns by Spitzenkandidaten intensified, with most parties except for the Far Right nominating leading candidates. This article analyses the maturation of this process in view of the experience of the 2019 European elections. It proceeds by reviewing the evolution from 2014 t0 2019, identifying the degree of change and continuity in practices before assessing the impact of the process on party political campaigns, election results and subsequent appointment decisions. By way of conclusion, the article discusses the degree to which the Spitzenkandidaten process has established itself as a routine part of EU politics and reflects, on this basis, on the future prospects of the system.

Chairs: Marta Migliorati, Valerio Vignoli

Discussants: Sabrina Cavatorto

Policy, vote, or domestic opportunity goals? A mixed-method investigation of the drivers (and lack thereof) of multilevel party contacts in the European Union
Margherita De Candia
AbstractThe European Parliament (EP) is nowadays a powerful legislative assembly. The question then arises of whether national parties have started to devote more attention to this institution. In other words, are national parties following more closely than in the past the internal workings of the EP? Are they putting more efforts into coordinating with their national delegations gathered in Brussels and Strasbourg? These are the overarching questions that this paper seeks to explore by employing a mixed-method approach. In a nutshell, the answer is ‘not quite yet’. As the investigation demonstrates, a gap persists between Members of the European Parliament and their parent parties at home, especially when the latter occupy the mainstream side of the party system. The empirical analysis is underpinned by a revised version of Müller and Strøm’s goal-seeking framework, according to which national parties’ incentives to invest time in multilevel party contacts depends on the pursuit of policy, vote, and domestic opportunity goals. The main contributions to knowledge are as follows: First, both the quantitative and qualitative investigation question the deductively derived speculation that attention paid to the EP by national parties would increase along with the institution’s empowerment. Second, the analysis demonstrates how incentives to invest in multilevel party contacts vary depending on the position parties occupy in the national arena and on the subsequent variation in domestic opportunities arising from membership to the EP. Third, the study sheds light on how national parties craftily adapt their EP dealings to the surrounding political context, paying attention to public perception about the EP and the consequent vote-payoffs connected with multilevel party contacts. These findings shed new light on the interplay between party goals and national parties’ EU dealings, and hint at the limited impact the broadening of the EP remit has had on multilevel party politics in the EU.

Can the enemies of my enemy be my friends? The paradox of a European transnational alliance among Eurosceptic nationalist parties
Maria Giovanna Sessa, Giacomo Riccio
AbstractThe ways in which parties react to the deepening and widening of European integration is currently a focal point in political research. In Europe, the rearrangement of competition around the integration-demarcation cleavage (e.g. Kriesi et al. 2006; 2008) puts in the spotlight the debate on the communitarian process (e.g. Hooghe and Marks 2012) and its negative bent towards Euroscepticism, primarily embraced by challenger parties (e.g. Vasilopoulou 2013). In this highly polarized context, Euro-pessimist parties (Mudde and Kopecky 2002: 302) of nationalist inspiration have been able to broadcast a political narrative aimed at celebrating the alleged unity of purpose of nationalist parties within the European Union (EU). Behind the view of these challenger parties is the shared perception of globalization as a threat to national sovereignty, which calls for an ideological battle of “‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’” (Mudde 2004: 543). Hence, the idea of a transnational alliance against the evils of European integration is developed, or “a League of the Leagues of Europe”, as repeatedly invoked by Italian League’s leader Matteo Salvini in view of the upcoming European elections in May 2019. However, the thought of a sort of ‘Nationalist International’ is a contradiction in terms as the lowest common denominator of nationalism as an ideology (e.g. Castles and Miller 2009; Mudde 2010) is not the enmity to the EU per se, but the claim of one nation’s superiority, a standpoint that rejects any possible transnational alliance by nature. Therefore, our paper intends to demonstrate the inconsistency of an electoral alliance among parties that regularly pursue their self-interests over their peers’ through a systematic study of their behavior in intergovernmental decision-making processes. In particular, we select the members of the Europe of Nations and Freedom Group (ENF), as the most radical objector to European integration in the elected European Parliament (EP). Two research questions stem from these considerations. Firstly, whether and to what extent supposedly similar parties, which belong to the same EP political group, vote differently over a variety of issues. Secondly, among which parties and over what policy dimensions the hypothesised divergence is greater. For this purpose, we code an original dataset of the roll call votes within the EP plenary sessions of the VIII Legislature, from July 2014 to the end of the legislature. This is a demanding period for the EU, marked by the aftermath of the Eurozone crisis and the intensification of migratory flows, resulting in disagreement over further integration or even defection. In conclusion, by exploring a question that has been occasionally approached within the journalistic field, our comparative study contributes to research on Euroscepticism and nationalism through the empirical testing of the likelihood and credibility of a transnational alliance of nationalist challenger parties on the basis of their behavior in EU public office.

Preferences in the European Parliament on international trade: national, party or group driven?
Marta Migliorati, Valerio Vignoli
AbstractRecent EU-negotiated trade agreements such as the TTIP and CETA have divided public opinion and revealed the presence of strong divisions between European Parties, highlighting cleavages between protectionist and liberal views. What are the drivers of such diverging preferences? Are they based on national interest, party ideology, or group affiliation? Existing research has already tackled party positioning in the European Parliament (EP): yet, few scholars have sought to investigate how these preferences develop in specific policy areas. We focus on a sector which lies at the very heart of the European Union project, that is international trade. We develop three hypotheses accounting for parties’ preferences and test them by analysing a sample of EP debates in the past two terms through qualitative textual analysis.

Chairs: Fabrizio Di Mascio, Simona Piattoni

Discussants: Alessandro Natalini

Explaining the implementation of the European Semester in Italy
Camilla Mariotto, Fabio Franchino
AbstractSince the onset of the sovereign debt crises, the European Union has introduced several mechanisms in its economic and fiscal architecture. At its core is the European Semester, through which, on the one side, the Commission and the Council scrutinize and guide national economic, fiscal and social policies, and, on the other side, the EU countries discuss their economic reform and budget plans. In this paper, we study whether and to what extent Italy implements the country-specific recommendations given by the EU in the European Semester. The empirical analysis uses data taken from a unique dataset, which includes the assessments of 41 recommendations given to the Italian government in the period 2011-2017. This paper evaluates the implementation of the country-specific recommendations differentiating among the performance rate (no or limited progress; some progress; and full or substantial progress) and policy areas (namely, fiscal surveillance based on the Stability and Growth Pact; the so-called Macroeconomic Imbalances Procedures; and the coordination of economic and employment policies). Preliminary data show that Italy has made some progress in 56 percent, mainly in the financial sector, structural reforms and labour and social policies; and no or limited progress in 29 percent of the recommendations, mainly in fiscal policies.

Il Semestre Europeo in Italia: quale impatto amministrativo, politico, normativo?
Simona Piattoni, Fabrizio Di Mascio
AbstractQuesto contributo intende analizzare l’impatto che l’esercizio del Semestre europeo ha avuto in Italia sui processi decisionali relativi alla stesura del bilancio e sulle considerazioni politiche e normative ad essi collegate. Analizza in particolare le raccomandazioni emanate dalla Commissione durante gli anni della crisi dell’euro e la loro ricezione da parte dei governi italiani e dell’opinione pubblica. Avanza alcune ipotesi relative alle teorie che possono spiegare l’adozione oppure la resistenza all’adozione di tali raccomandazioni, a partire da quelle più legate al processo di europeizzazione (condizionamenti esterni, ma anche apprendimento e socializzazione), alle strategie negoziali all’interno del Consiglio e con la Commissione, e alle teorie normative circa la legittimità del differimento del coinvolgimento del parlamento nazionale nella discussione approfondita del bilancio nazionale. Si intende pertanto rispondere alla domanda se il Semestre europeo sia rimasto un esercizio formale e “cartaceo” – come da alcuni sostenuto – oppure se inizi a cambiare i processi amministrativi, ma anche politici e democratici relativi alla decisione che paradigmaticamente più rappresenta l’essenza della democrazia rappresentativa: la decisione di bilancio.

Governance europea e politiche del lavoro: l'evidenza disponibile e il caso italiano.
Furio Stamati, Stefano Sacchi
AbstractRiconciliare integrazione economica e sociale è la maggiore sfida politica dell’odierna UE. Operando alla loro intersezione, le politiche del lavoro rivestono un ruolo chiave nel soddisfacimento di tale ambizione. Tuttavia, come espressione di delicati equilibri locali di natura politico-economica e normativo-culturale a livello nazionale, esse mettono alla prova la capacità dell’Unione di portare a sintesi, senza conculcarle, tradizioni e sensibilità diverse. Tradizioni dotate – a livello nazionale – di legittimità politica: risorsa tanto preziosa quanto scarsa nella politics europea. Dalle prime iniziative esplicite di coordinamento delle politiche del lavoro degli stati membri sino ai timidi tentativi di “socializzare” il Semestre europeo, le potenzialità “integrative” di questo settore di politica pubblica si sono dimostrate ampie ma ardue da attivare. Difficilmente, infatti, le istituzioni sovranazionali possono raccogliere tutte le informazioni contestuali (di natura tecnica e politica) necessarie a ottimizzare, in modo socialmente accettabile, l’incontro istituzionalmente "embedded" di domanda e offerta di lavoro. L'Unione europea può invece indicare i limiti delle configurazioni esistenti, sia in termini di performance economico-fiscale che di alternative di policy storicamente inespresse. Ciò lascia ai decisori nazionali il grosso dell’iniziativa politica, restringendo l’impatto diretto dell’Unione sui contenuti della cornice regolativa nazionale. Al contrario, le indicazioni normative e le pressioni fiscali e reputazionali di matrice europea possono imporre temporanei disequilibri alle traiettorie nazionali, utili agli attori di orientamento riformista per elaborare nuovi scambi, proposte e narrative di policy. Il presente contributo intende in primo luogo passare in rassegna l'evidenza esistente sugli effetti del nuovo ciclo di coordinamento sul cambiamento di policy (e di policymaking) a livello nazionale; quindi focalizzare l'attenzione sugli ultimi cicli di riforme di politica del lavoro in Italia nella loro interazione con il coordinamento delle politiche economiche e sociali nell'UE. Secondo gli standard europei, l’Italia è l’emblema di un mercato del lavoro disfunzionale, incapace di generare efficienza, flessibilità, capacità adattativa e protezione sociale. Le raccomandazioni europee sono pertanto state numerose, così come le riforme tentate e realizzate. L'ipotesi avanzata è che, in quanto tali, le raccomandazioni del Semestre europeo non si siano tradotte direttamente in riforme, attraverso un inasprimento dei vincoli di politica pubblica sull’Italia, laddove altri vincoli, principalmente legati alla disciplina indotta dai mercati, hanno giocato un ruolo più rilevante. Piuttosto, esse hanno favorito, indirettamente, il protagonismo di coalizioni politiche con agende di riforma eminentemente domestiche. Individuando alcuni meccanismi che traducono vincoli esterni in opportunità interne, intendiamo contribuire alla ricerca sull’impatto della governance europea sui sistemi sociali nazionali, sottolineandone la complessità e la contingenza.

Le pensioni nel semestre europeo
Mattia Guidi, Igor Guardiancich
AbstractLo scrutinio delle politiche previdenziali nazionali ha avuto fin dall’inizio un posto importante nel ciclo del semestre europeo. La ragione di questo è duplice: da un lato, il semestre è stato avviato nella fase più critica della Grande Recessione e della conseguente crisi dei debiti sovrani; dall’altro, le pensioni rappresentano generalmente la principale voce di spesa nei bilanci statali, con un impatto determinante sulla sostenibilità di deficit e debito pubblico. Questo paper vuole rispondere a due domande concernenti il ruolo delle pensioni nel semestre europeo. In primo luogo, secondo quali criteri vengono assegnate le raccomandazioni riguardanti le politiche previdenziali agli stati membri? Prevale una logica “tecnocratica”, per cui le raccomandazioni riflettono i fondamentali dei vari sistemi nazionali, oppure la Commissione e il Consiglio adottano maggiore severità verso alcuni stati e minore severità verso altri? In secondo luogo, qual è il risultato delle raccomandazioni? Gli stati a cui viene chiesto di adottare determinate riforme si attivano in tal senso oppure le raccomandazioni rimangono “lettera morta”? Utilizzando un data set originale che codifica tutte le raccomandazioni riguardanti la politica previdenziale contenute nelle Raccomandazioni specifiche per paese dal 2011 al 2016, e una rielaborazione di un data set del DG ECFIN contenente le principali misure di riforma delle pensioni nei paesi membri, il paper dimostra che: a) la Commissione utilizza nella stesura delle raccomandazioni un approccio prevalentemente tecnocratico, e il Consiglio non si discosta significativamente da quanto predisposto dalla Commissione; b) le raccomandazioni non hanno un effetto uniforme nello spingere gli stati membri a riformare i loro sistemi pensionistici. In particolare, i paesi con migliori capacità di governance sono quelli che attuano di più le raccomandazioni, mentre in un numero significativo di casi riforme pensionistiche sono state spinte più da pressioni dei mercati o pressioni politiche sovranazionali informali che dalle raccomandazioni formulate nell’ambito del semestre europeo.

Chairs: Maria Giulia Amadio Viceré

Discussants: Thomas Christiansen

Politica migratoria ed evoluzione del traffico di migranti in Italia. Risultati di un’analisi di casi studio
Valentina Punzo
AbstractSebbene l’organizzazione degli sbarchi rappresenti soltanto l’ultima fase di un meccanismo criminale che coinvolge più attori esso costituisce probabilmente il momento più drammatico dell’intero processo che attiene al traffico di migranti, in considerazione dell’alto numero di morti registrato nel Mediterraneo negli ultimi anni. Secondo le regole attualmente in vigore, il Paese dell’Ue su cui il migrante mette piede per la prima volta deve espletare le procedure di richiesta di asilo. L’Italia, insieme alla Grecia e alla Spagna, è uno dei principali punti di accesso per i migranti che vogliano entrare in Europa. Negli ultimi tre anni, gli accordi bilaterali con la Libia sottoscritti dal governo Gentiloni, confermati dall’attuale governo, insieme alla controversa strategia della chiusura dei porti portata avanti dal Ministro dell’Interno hanno contribuito a rallentare i flussi verso il nostro Paese. Contestualmente, il 31 marzo scorso è stata sospesa la componente navale della missione Eunav for Med Sophia, avviata al fine di contrastare il traffico di esseri umani e il contrabbando nel Mediterraneo. Nel medesimo periodo, in Libia sono ripresi gli scontri tra l’autoproclamato Esercito nazionale libico del generale Khalifa Haftar e il governo di accordo nazionale di Tripoli. In questo scenario, risulta di particolare interesse analizzare gli effetti “perversi” della politica del governo italiano sul fenomeno del traffico di migranti. Lo studio che qui si presenta – parte del più ampio progetto sui traffici illeciti nel Mediterraneo (progetto Nesmes) – si propone di mettere in evidenza come l’irrigidimento della politica migratoria italiana abbia provocato l’emersione di una nuova rotta di smuggling nell’area del Mediterraneo centrale tra la Tunisia e l’Italia, condotta con modalità differenti rispetto al traffico di migranti praticato dalla Libia. La ricerca mostra in particolare come il fenomeno abbia accresciuto l’interesse di organizzazioni criminali altamente qualificate che hanno sfruttato le opportunità aperte dal mutato scenario geopolitico. Lo studio empirico si basa su un set unico di dati costituito da interviste a testimoni qualificati e fonti giudiziarie relative agli ultimi tre anni.

The 2015 EU global strategy and European asylum regime: a building block analysis
Diego Caballero Vélez
AbstractIn the recent years, the EU has experienced a series of crises, such as Brexit and the refugee crisis, that have posed many questions about the different integration processes in the EU policy domains. In the context of European asylum regime, during the 2015 refugee crisis, some Member States have been reluctant in cooperating at EU level. Recently, collective action and public goods literature has shed light on international cooperation politics. In the EU context, collective action dynamics have been often used to explain policy-making changes and cooperation among Member States. In this regard, the 2015 EU Global Strategy´s may be seen as a tool in order to incentive Member States in cooperationg in diffferent issues such as migration. Through a public goods building block model, refugee protection is analyzed as the global public good and the EU Global Strategy as the international building block needed for the provision of refugee protection. Thiis public goods model gives some interesting insights about Member States cooperation in asylum within the context of the 2015 EU Global Strategy

Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration: the (European?) unease between migration management and human rights commitments
Mauro Costa
AbstractOne year after the migration crisis of 2015, the EU’s Global Strategy set out the Union’s commitment to engage with all relevant actors so to cooperate in migration management at all levels. Five months later (November 2016) the UN General Assembly initiated, with the New York Declaration, the negotiations for two Global Compacts, one on refugees and one on migration. Beside the clear involvement of the Union in pushing for such a global framework, what emerges in the Global Compact for Migration is the uncomfortable coexistence (“unease”) of human rights commitments and border management concerns that has so far characterized the EU’s policies of border externalization. This paper sets forth, under a critical and constructivist viewpoint, an enquiry on how human security and traditional state security concerns have been uneasily put together in the Global Compact. Specifically, it looks at the textual evolution of four objectives, from the Zero Draft to the Marrakech Compact, which recall crucial dimensions of the EU-ropean model of migration governance: the concern to save lives, the integration of border management, the fight against smugglers and the commitment to address migrants’ vulnerabilities. This text analysis method looks at the outputs of a drafting process that involved both institutional and civil society actors, so to draw conclusions on how different security interests interacted in defining non-binding objectives on migration: this may provide for a replicable methodology that could emphasize new trends in migration governance at different levels.

UN GLOBAL COMPACT AS A NEW INTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORK FOR MIGRATION. HAS THE EU LEARNED BY THE CEAS EXPERIENCE?
Antonio Russo
AbstractIn December 2018 the United Nations General Assembly signed the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (or UN Global Compact) in order to create a new and coherent international framework in response to the growing migration over the world. The UNGC is a soft-law instrument formed by non-binding guidelines rather than compulsories norms. Despite its non-binding nature the Global Compact may have a strong impact on the field of international migration law (Bufalini 2019, Gammeltoft Hensen 2017 and Guild 2017). The Global Compact has been signed by 164 countries. Some EU Member States did not sign the agreement (such as the Viségrad countries) and others did not participate to the Marrakech Conference (such as Italy). Frameworks on migration, refugees and partnership with third countries are not a new issue for the European Union that only in the last two decades approved the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), the Migration Partnership Framework (MPF) and joined the Global Approach to Migration and Mobility (GAMM). Nevertheless, the recent experience of the CEAS (that stated guidelines in order to achieve convergence in asylum policies and in asylum recognition rates across the EU MSs) shows that the countries did not follow these common guidelines and that no convergence across the Member States has been reached. This paper thus aims at understanding how the European Union behavior will probably be in respect to this new common agreement and how the MSs are expected to follow or not the guidelines stated by the UNGC by referring to the recent experiences on these issues.

Alive and Kicking? Liberal Intergovernmentalism and the Italian post-EUGS approach on migration
Davide Angelucci, Maria Giulia Amadio Viceré
AbstractIn recent times migration has become a key topic in the European Union (EU) political debate, including in the 2016 EU Global Strategy (EUGS). In parallel, an expanding scientific literature has addressed this issue from very different perspectives. A first line of research has examined the politicization process of migration, focusing on the positions and interactions of parties and public opinion on this matter. A second strand has instead explored the implementation of migration policy in Europe, with a focus on the role played by EU member states and institutions. Less studied, however, is the process of formation and transmission of EU member states’ policy objectives from the national to the intergovernmental arena, as well as the ways in which the preferences of different states can converge and create coalitions. Through the lenses of liberal intergovernmentalism, the study addresses these research gaps by connecting the process through which member states’ migration policy preferences are formed in the national arena with how these positions are negotiated at the European level. In so doing, we focus on the case of Italy in the EUGS’s implementation of a joined-up approach to migration. In particular, the article is articulated in three steps: first, at the national level, we assess issue congruence on immigration of Italian political elites, economic elites, and public opinion, under the assumption that member states’ policy orientations are generated by the interactions between different political and societal actors; second, we analyse the extent to which the Italian policy orientations on migration can converge/diverge with those of other EU member states; third, we explore how EU member states positions on migration are eventually negotiated in the intergovernmental arena. Finally, we discuss the results of the analysis conducted and their possible consequences on the relations between EU member states, as well as the formation of interstate coalitions on this issue.