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The Community system is not based on separation of powers but on representation of interests. Each European institution is the bearer of a particular, national or supranational interest, which it strives to protect and promote. This makes the European Community a latter-day version of mixed government. The principle of institutional balance, typical of mixed government, entails the preservation of the relative position of each interest, and of the institution which represents it. This key principle, combined with the Commission’s monopoly of agenda setting, has become a serious obstacle to institutional innovation and policy learning in the EU.

Member states are increasingly willing to commit themselves to common tasks, but wish to act outside the Community method. How credible are such commitments? It is easy to find cases where the national governments did not take their commitments seriously, but it is also the case that significant results have been achieved outside the traditional framework. There are in fact effective strategies of commitment that do not involve delegation of powers to third parties. In an information-rich environment, where national leaders are quite aware of the preferences and constraints of their colleagues, delegation to centralized institutions is less important than it was in the early stages of integration.

During this period the President of the European Commission lost his pivotal institutional position as power shifted from the followers of Monnet to the defenders of member state sovereignty. National governments had democratic legitimacy which the initiating, goal-setting Commission lacked and de Gaulle enforced their veto over important innovations. A mixture of shared sovereignty in some matters and retained sovereignty in others meant that the Council of Ministers and later the European Council assumed greater prominence. Insider strategic innovation, using the Community Method personified by Delors as Commission President and the Single European Act, marked the triumph of binding agreements, but his successors were unable to sustain the past integration impetus.

The governance of the euro area represents a radical break from the European Union’s traditional modus operandi, the Community method. This book explores how EMU has fared in the absence of the Community method from the launch of the euro in 1999 to the onset of the euro area’s sovereign debt crisis in 2010. This chapter sets the scene for this discussion, explaining what the Community method is, how the euro area departs from it, and why this departure matters for debates about the governance of the euro area and policymaking in the European Union more generally.

This book has explored how EMU fared in the absence of the Community method from the launch of the euro in 1999 to the onset of the euro area’s sovereign debt crisis in 2010. This chapter summarizes the key findings of this investigation and discusses their wider significance for debates about the future of new modes of policymaking in the European Union and the fate of EMU. It concludes with an overview of the proposals for strengthening economic governance presented by both the Commission and the Van Rompuy Taskforce in late 2010 and considers whether plans for a crisis resolution mechanism could belatedly pave the way for the Community method in the euro area.

This chapter analyses the various instruments that shape and regulate public services in Europe, with a particular focus on those instruments affecting social public services and employment services. It is suggested that public services, and employment services in particular, are placed in the midst of an extremely complex regulatory web composed by both traditional, hard law, instruments and by more reflexive and soft forms of regulation, ranging from policy Guidelines elaborated within the OMC framework, to funding arrangements provided by the European Social Fund. Crucially, this regulatory web is both woven at a supranational level and at a national and, sometimes, sub-national level and is inspired by both social and economic concerns. A visible trend is the growing role played by private and contractual modes of regulation, most obviously in the relationship between public services, private contractors/providers, and individual users.

This chapter focuses on the application to the common foreign and security policy (CFSP) of the constitutional concepts, principles, and techniques that were examined in Part I in relation to EC external relations. The principle of conferral, the concepts of primacy and exclusivity, and the contrast between decision-making under Title V EU Treaty and the Community method are dealt with in successive sections.

Deliberative intergovernmentalism as a novel analytical framework in the field of integration theory focuses on understanding the new intergovernmentalism in EU policy-making and the centrality of the European Council and the Council within it. The shift from community method decision-making to policy coordination as the preferred governance mode within the new areas of EU activity is understood to result in a process of profound institutional change. Deliberation and consensus seeking become crucial at all stages of the policy process, as policy initiation and the enforcement of common rules are no longer delegated to supranational institutions. The dependency on consensus triggers constant attempts at institutional engineering aimed at improving the consensus generation function of the European Council and the Council as the lead forums for policy coordination among member states. This implies that conventional understandings, especially of the Council, which equate collective EU decision-making with law-making, largely fail to explain post-Maastricht institutional change.

This chapter examines how the EU has imposed external rule of law constraints on the Member States both as regards their domestic and foreign policies; and how both EU law itself internally, and international law externally, have imposed rule of law constraints on the EU. The discussion is organized as follows. It first sets out the core of the rule of law. It then explains how European integration has used a particular method, that is, the “Community method” or what could now be called the “ordinary Union method,” to enhance the observance of the rule of law among the nations of Europe. It then explores how that method explains both the undeniable success and some of the failures of the EU project. In particular, it is argued that that particular choice of method for European integration has led to a failure of the imposition of rule of law constraints on the area of “high politics” foreign policy. The lack of jurisdiction of the Court of Justice within the common foreign and security policy (CFSP) is used to illustrate that shortcoming, which considers the ordinary Union method as the only option for subjecting Member States' behavior to the rule of law, leaving other alternatives unconsidered. At the same time, the possibility of extending the Court's jurisdiction to the CFSP is used to illustrate how the rule of law can be advanced outside the original Community paradigm. The chapter argues that such advancement is only possible if the Union simultaneously strives for a reinforcement of the rule of law at the international level. It concludes that the cornerstone of European integration is not the ordinary Union method as the particular method chosen to subject Member States' behavior to the rule of law, but the rule of law itself.

The regulation of services can be viewed in a new light, given the recent developments of ‘new governance’ and ‘better regulation’ in the EU. New governance is a broader concept than better regulation, since it also encompasses non-regulatory means of pursuing policy objectives, but both are interconnected. This chapter presents with some speculative thoughts on the way ‘new governance’ could be effectively used in order to promote trade in services. One of the most tangible effects that ‘new governance’ and ‘better regulation’ have had in the field of services, has been the injection into — or, the emasculation of — the Classic Community Method with instruments aimed at the realization of new governance objectives. Contrary to the general assumption, new governance does not necessarily translate into soft law, but may alternatively have the effect of rendering the law ‘softer’, by making it more flexible and evolutive, and by entrusting its application to open-ended processes.

This chapter deals with the most dominant fears of parents: crime, drugs and anti-social behaviour. It observes that several anti-crime initiatives have evolved in these areas and parents report its impact and shortcomings. It notes that parents explain how much more needs to be done to make families in urban areas feel secure. It explores what interventions made a difference and what the overall impact on crime and families’ security was of the measures that were introduced, particularly, neighbourhood wardens, community policing methods, Anti-social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) and neighbourhood crime prevention.

This chapter focuses on the constituency of Commission officials who support the ‘Community method’ – a conception of the EU that places the Commission at the heart of European integration. It finds that, whilst adherents of this view are more likely to be Italians, Greeks and Belgians than Britons or Swedes, and Bulgarians rather than Romanians, they are not concentrated in particular departments of the Commission, nor is there a correlation between their beliefs and level of seniority or length of service. The more economically or culturally a liberal an official, however, the more likely it is that he or she will support the ‘Community method’. Its adherents, moreover, are more likely than other officials to be disenchanted about the Commission’s status in the Union and to be negatively disposed about administrative reform. Supporters of the ‘Community method’ would like to see an extension of the EU’s responsibilities in certain policy areas.

The Union system relies on a shifting balance between intergovernmental and integrated extremes, with the European Commission in the service of both. Commission legitimacy relies on it being designated by the Parliament, the Council, and Member States. Refusal to cut the number of members underscores an intergovernmental tendency. Revisions of the treaties and the practice have weakened what used to be the Commission’s main power—the legislative initiative. Those powers have become largely inoperative. Its missions of management and control have increased—as a true executive body. Rather than a decline there has been a transformation. The new balance is endangered by calls for increased politicization, in the partisan sense. Current powers are based on being independent, and politicization would endanger that. The President seems to be calling for powers of management and supervision, whilst he is in favour of politicization: in this sense, the Commission is at a crossroads.

This chapter introduces the EU's official legislative procedure and describes how one can discriminate between practices of formal and informal governance. The first section briefly describes the EU's origins and objectives, and identifies three stages of decision making—agenda setting, voting, and implementation—as the key elements of its legislative procedure, the so-called Community Method. Using plausible assumptions about the legislative actors' preferences, the second section creates a stylized model of the Community Method. On the basis of this model, it is possible to deduce a set of ideal-typical practices of formal governance. The chapter's final section specifies the predictions of the Liberal Regime Theory and its rivals regarding the variation of informal governance and the emergence of conflicts among the legislative actors.

This introductory chapter studies the possibilities and tensions for co-produced research practices that emerge from the collision of long-established, community-oriented research practices, an increased institutional emphasis on community co-production in academia, and the ongoing critique of the key terms of these practices. Among long-established approaches to community-oriented research scholarship, Participatory Action Research (PAR) is squarely oriented to a particular vision of social justice and community defined methods and research questions. The chapter cites various case studies about what co-production looks like and some of the challenges that arise. It opens up the field and begins to illustrate in practice what the tensions and challenges of co-production are.

The conclusion offers suggestions for incorporating the research conclusions into policy and future study. The book’s findings on community relationships suggest that women’s cooperatives, a development practice for empowerment, and problem solving in low-income international communities must account for the potential for abuse within these relationships. Community-based participatory methods, frequently utilized in public health and celebrated in anthropology, should be adapted for populations that, despite shared poverty and health risks, are highly fragmented. Healthcare policy could build on the health-seeking strategies commonly employed by women in slums. Finally, several methodological recommendations and future research directions are offered.