The Communitarization of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice: Why Institutional Change does not Translate into Policy Change

Abstract

This article proposes an explanation as to why institutional change -understood as more competences for the European Union's supranational institutions -has rarely led to policy change in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ). It draws attention to the constraints that newly empowered actors have faced in the wake of introducing the co-decision procedure. If the key principles of a given AFSJ sub-policy -its 'policy core' -were defined before institutional change occurred, the Council (as the dominant actor of the early intergovernmental co-operation) has found it easier to prevail in the altered structural environment and to co-opt or sideline actors with competing rationales. The article compares the importance of the new decision-making procedure with two alternative pathways potentially leading to policy change, namely, the power of litigation and the impact of unexpected external events.

The Trade Effects of Border Controls: Evidence from the European Schengen Agreement

“…2 Monar (2014) 'Regulation (EU) 1051/2013 on Common Rules for the Temporary Re-introduction of Border Control at Internal Borders in Exceptional Circumstances'. Trauner and Ripoll Servent (2016) argue that it is unclear whether the refugee crisis will strengthen or weaken the Schengen area in the long run. 3 Our estimates imply long-run effects of undoing Schengen, assuming that check-point conditions equivalent to the pre-Schengen era are re-established.…”

Public Attention, Governmental Bargaining, and Supranational Activism: Explaining European Integration in Response to Crises

“…set up of Europol's new European Counter Terrorism Centre in The Hague (Trauner and Ripoll Servent, 2016). The potential British departure from the EU, in turn, primarily concerns 'horizontal' European integration; 'vertical' integration in the remaining 27 Member States is not directly affected (for the concepts, see Leuffen et al, 2013).…”

Understanding the European Integration in the Asylum Policy: State-of-the-Art and Avenues for Future Research

“…The authors emphasise the states´ ability to unite forces when in need of confronting the other EU institutions. In other words, despite the new institutional framework, national governments have proven to be successful in shaping the policy debates and setting standards of legitimacy in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) (Trauner & Ripoll Servent 2016). This new research line calls for new analytical perspectives to account for the major institutional changes, particularly the enhanced powers of the EU supranational institutions, their role and capacity to impact the decision and policy-making in the asylum policy (e.g.…”

“…Despite this new supranational approach, the Amsterdam Treaty foresaw a transitional period of five years in which ´member states were still left with a wide range of powers and remained the main actors in the asylum policy area´ (Bačić 2012:48; see also Ripoll Servent & Trauner 2014;Trauner & Ripoll Servent 2016). By way of explanation, during this transitional period the EC had to share its right of initiative with the EU states, and the European Parliament (EP) only had an advisory role (Guiraudon 2000: 263-264;Kaunert & Léonard 2012: 1404-1405.…”