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Journal of European Public Policy

Volume 19, 2012 - Issue 2

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Original Articles

Europe's deliberative intergovernmentalism: the role of the Council and European Council in EU economic governance

Uwe Puetter Correspondencepuetteru@ceu.hu
Pages 161-178
Published online: 08 Sep 2011
 
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Original Articles

Europe's deliberative intergovernmentalism: the role of the Council and European Council in EU economic governance

Abstract

The European Union's (EU's) responses to the economic and financial crisis provided a vigorous illustration for how the role of the Union's core intergovernmental bodies – the European Council and the Council – has evolved in recent years. The European Council has emerged as the centre of political gravity in the field of economic governance. The Council and the Eurogroup fulfil a crucial role as forums for policy debate. The emphasis on increased high-level intergovernmental policy co-ordination is the reflection of an integration paradox inherent to the post-Maastricht EU. While policy interdependencies have grown, member state governments have resisted the further transfer of formal competences to the EU level and did not follow the model of the Community method. Instead, they aim for greater policy coherence through intensified intergovernmental co-ordination. Given its consensus dependency, this co-ordination system can best be conceptualized as deliberative intergovernmentalism.

Keywords: Council, deliberation, Economic and Monetary Union, European Council, intergovernmentalism, policy co-ordination

Additional information

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A draft version of this article was presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions workshop ‘Contested policies – European responses to the global economic and financial crisis’ in Münster, March 2010. I am particularly grateful to the workshop participants as well as to the anonymous referees of the Journal of European Public Policy for their helpful comments. I also acknowledge the feedback I received from the members of the European integration research group of Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) in Berlin who hosted me as a visiting fellow in the first half of 2009.

Notes

Deidre Curtin (2009) Curtin, D. 2009. Executive Power of the European Union: Law, Practices, and the Living Constitution, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] defined all non-legislative EU activities as executive decision-making. Her study allows for the first time a more systematic and encompassing understanding of the scope and the consequences of this type of decision-making for EU governance in general.

The SGP consists of a package of provisions which are of varying legal status. Parts of the pact are legally not binding.

Anonymous interview conducted in 2009. The paper is based on over 20 expert interviews with EU officials from the Council and the Commission as well as senior civil servants working on EU economic governance in national finance ministries and the personal administrations of heads of state or government.

See European Council, presidency conclusions, Section II.A., Brussels, 22–23 March 2009.

Anonymous interview conducted in 2009.

Anonymous interview conducted in 2010.

Anonymous interview conducted in 2009.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

See Barber (2010) and Riccardi (2010).

Extracts from the speech ‘The challenges for Europe in a changing world’, delivered by Herman van Rompuy, president of the European Council, Collège d'Europe, Bruges, 25 February 2010, press release of the European Council PCE 34/10.

See for example, Hulverscheidt and Fried (2010).

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