There are many different aspects and dimensions to the EU.
Different ideas more convincing to different people - you must find what you believe to be the most convincing, or decide that none provide an entirely accurate account of the EU.
Conceptions of the EU:
All accounts relevant to some extent and make up part of the EU story.
Intergovernmentalism - The EU as Exercise of State Power:
Intergovernmentalism provides is a traditional view where the EU is a group of national states voluntarily connected through international law. Integration is driven by national actors pursuing national interests and, therefore, the EU should follow what the member states want. Under this, individual states are in power for the most important (usually political) decisions and retain their autonomy.
EG: European Council, Eurogroup, NP
Milward views the EU as the European ‘rescue of the nation state’. [1] It helps individual states to retain power by consolidating together. This is particularly relevant at the time of the EU’s conception after the end of WW2, where doing things collectively wasn’t meant to replace, but rather save, the nation state.
Moravcsik notes that every big step and rational choice that led to further integration is made by powerful actors on a national level. They bargain to ensure the preferences of their nation state are met through integration, with oversight from the impartial supervisory institutions they have ceded some power to. This legitimises the EU.
Normatively speaking, intergovernmentalism suggests that member states should be at the heart of integration because EU decisions are legitimised by the democratic nature of national parliaments.
Problems:
The intergovernmentalist view potentially leads to inaction due to the need for unanimity (all states have a veto power). This makes it difficult to solve collective problems as each state has its own national goals and interests.
The larger states tend to have more power and status to push through their agenda in the EU. Arguably, this makes sense since larger states represent a larger proportion of EU citizens.
On the other hand, it would be unfair to allow small states to continually veto decisions when they make up a very small proportion of membership, yet intergovernmentalism seeks for all states to have equal power.
When members leave, the EU deals with them through international agreements. For example, the British Governments decision to ignore the Northern Ireland protocol in the withdrawal agreement is a show of intergovernmentalism.
(Neo-)Functionalism – The EU as a Technocracy:
This is the view that the process of integration can be explained by an almost practical logic: the purpose of the EU is to get things done, not to be political. Therefore, a great deal of power should be given to apolitical, technocratic and bureaucratic institutions instead of national actors.
EG: EMU and COVID post-crisis management.
As a continent, Europe is facing joint issues (EG: climate change) and wants to achieve collective goals (EG: increasing wealth through the single market). The EU should face these as a collective by giving a level of power to deliberately unaccountable and undemocratic experts. This, in turn, keeps the EU decisions impartial and highly efficient.
EG: ideas on the state and severity of the climate crisis vary significantly across the EU. Under the neo-functionalist view, the EU ought to solve this problem by employing experts rather than allow member states to simply veto.
Neo-functionalism works on the premise that integration creates further integration due to the required functional spill overs (when you try to achieve one objective, you need to achieve many sub-objectives first).
EG: if the EU’s objective is to create an economic union, this requires an open and free market, which requires that manufacturing standards need to be equal between member states, which means that employment rights need to be equal… etc.
Legitimacy under functionalism comes from the outputs it achieves and produces. These outputs are best achieved when power is moved away from politicians towards experts and technocrats.
Problems:
Functionalism works on the premise that technocratic actors can act apolitically. This is not necessarily the case in practice: expert decisions still depend on individual lived experience, political alignment, ethical commitments etc. Where these political issues arise, functionalism does not know how to deal with them.
Over time, transnational and increasingly autonomous actors gain greater power. To whose end these people are acting must be questioned. This is a non-issue when there is general agreement on the objective and the possible solutions. Where there is disagreement, the question arises as to how to resolve the issue.
Supranationalism - The EU as an Incipient Form of State:
Under supranationalism, the EU represents the creation of something more than a new political space for the articulation of the interests of citizens in their nation states. This account views the EU as a nation state (that being a supernational polity or federal state) in the making, with political power progressively shifting from a national to European level.
This is a view that citizens of member states democratically control the EU, just as they control their own nation state, creating a European demos. Therefore, people become more euro-friendly over time as power centralises. Consequently, this creates space for a post-national democratic space where European political, legislative and judicial actors become increasingly powerful.
Some see that the EU is on a federal trajectory already by following Federalist ideals (‘The United States of Europe’).
EG: Spinelli, Mancini, Cohn-Bendit, Varoufakis etc.
Problems:
Supranationalism relies on the idea of a European identity being present or necessary. This European identity, in reality, is quite limited in comparison to how people view themselves in relation to their nation (due to national and cultural differences).
This is a barrier to supranationalism that arguably cannot be overcome. Others, however, have argued that only once the institutional preconditions of supranationalism are met will a European demos create itself.
Seems rather utopian – the EU constrains democratic choices at a national level without reproducing them at a European level.
Post-functionalism - The EU as at an Impasse:
This account has emerged within the last 20 years due to how it has dealt with crisis and growing resistance against integration on a national level.
Post-functionalism views integration as having an intractable problem that is what makes the EU (between functionalism and intergovernmentalism). Centrally, there are functional demands pushing towards further integration, but member states wish to retain their interdependent nature, national identity and interests because of mass politics pushing against integration.
‘Postfunctionalism is an ambitious attempt to shift the terms of debate.’ [2]
‘The power of the national level lies in the mobilisation of mass politics, rather than economic interests’ therefore ‘the “protection” of Member State power takes shape through citizens rather than elites.’ [3]
The function of the EU is to mediate these tensions, making its institutions sensitive to the politics-function counterbalance debate. Normatively speaking, post-functionalism does not necessarily see this tension as a problem that needs to be overcome, but one that needs to be managed.
Problems:
There is an implicit tension in post-functionalism between this interdependence and the politicisation of the EU. Now, EU politics and contentious issues are seen as a vehicle for national support by politicians.
Integration is therefore naturally limited by the national sentiment within each state – asymmetrically, every member state dislikes something about another member state, making progression difficult.
EG: Increasingly common national resistance, climate change adaption etc.
‘The EU is at risk not only from Eurosceptic challengers but from member state governments’ determination to circumvent them.’ [4]
The Role of Law in Integration:
There is no European army or police to enforce EU law. Therefore, other means are necessary, namely the use of law.
Republican and Liberal Accounts of Law:
Republican: law is the outcome of majoritarian democratic politics (input legitimacy).
Law as a means to an end.
Liberal: law is not an articulation of politics, but a limit placed upon it (output legitimacy).
Law is an end, in and of itself.
Integration through Law:
Supremacy and Direct Effect give national courts the power to favour EU law over national law where there are conflicts. This deliberately depoliticises integration; it ‘serves to depoliticise policy questions and tie national actors to a centrally decided policy orientation’. [5]
Law becomes an object and agent of integration.
‘EU law keeps generating sites of conflict and resistance throughout the policy domains that it engages with. The use of law as an instrument to tie Member States to the common project and prevent the imposition of costs between them, in other words, destabilises rather than stabilises the project of integration.’ [6]
Law has a deep, and deliberate, politicising effect. Politics has a role in shaping law too.
Justifications:
Ordo-liberalism: Theory of freedom, particularly economic rights, ought to be strongly protected by the state. Economic freedoms do not only serve economic ends but limit the state’s ability to interfere with the lives of citizens and curtail the freedoms. As an institution set up to create a common market, the EU seems to achieve this.
Constrained democracy: democratic systems begin to be undermined over time, so should be limited by a strong legal order.
Political messianism: the objective of the EU (war never again / peace and prosperity) is of paramount importance, so a legal system should be so strong to efficiently and effectively prevent this.
Pragmatism: decision making among such a large amount of member states is difficult. Law plays a fundamental role in the process of European integration.
Resources:
References:
[1] Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation State (Routledge 2000) [2] Hodson and Puetter, ‘The European Union in disequilibrium: new intergovernmentalism, postfunctionalism and integration theory in the post-Maastricht period’ (2019) JEPP 1166 [3] Dawson and De Witte, EU Law and Governance (Cambridge University Press 2022) 16 [4] Hodson and Puetter, ‘The European Union in disequilibrium: new intergovernmentalism, postfunctionalism and integration theory in the post-Maastricht period’ (2019) JEPP 1167 [5] De Witte, ‘Interdependence and Contestation in European Integration’ (2018) European Papers 508 [6] De Witte, ‘Interdependence and Contestation in European Integration’ (2018) European Papers 475
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