Edward Best

EU Assimilation & Adaptation without Transformation

This excellent book in the series of studies on EU reform and enlargement is not as dry as it first appears, yet it succeeds as the first book in the series which debates, seriously, the processes of institutional reform and EU enlargement as they stand four years on from the last brave treaty.

The essays investigate how these main institutions and decision making processes of the EU have responded to the arrival of new member states in eleven detailed articles with suitably intellectual content plus an introduction and a conclusion.

Best, Christiansen and Settembri, plus their team of expert contributors, have assessed the actual state of the institutions
since EU enlargement in 2004, examining each of the main institutional actors as well as trends in legislative output, implementing measures and non-legislative approaches. The contributors outline the key changes as well as patterns of continuity in the institutional policies of the EU and their research which I feel will be highly beneficial to lawyers, economists and politicians.

The expert analysis finds that breakdown has been avoided by a combination of assimilation of the new member states and adaptation of the system, without any fundamental transformation of the institutions, and is clearly set out in the essays by the 15 writers with a useful appendix and a detailed index.

They conclude that it is not just ‘business as usual’ now. The streamlining and formalization of procedures, together with increased informal practices, have longer term implications for transparency and accountability. Widening has not prevented a deepening of European integration, but it has deepened normative concerns about the democratic legitimacy of that process which will remain very much on the agenda of the enlarged EU as we look at future expansion with more maturity (hopefully).

This nuanced approach to the complexities of studying institutional politics and change contains important new and original data. I found the book to be invaluable for postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students of EU politics and administrative science, as well as researchers, practitioners and journalists working in the fields of European studies more widely, but readers have to possess fairly substantial knowledge as the book is heavy.

LEADING COMMENTS

To assist the reader, some excellent comments have already been published which gives a balanced appraisal of the continuity and change issues facing the EU. Helen Wallace says that ‘this volume reports a thorough appraisal of how the EU institutions have fared since the 2004 enlargement. In essence the answer is more of the same with no evidence of gridlock’. How right she is!

Martin Westlake says it is a timely, comprehensive and authoritative study provides which much food for thought for European policy makers, and, I would add, at a time when we really need it.

The final remarks come from Joseph Weiler who observes that the authors have given us ‘a systematic and sophisticated examination of institutional performance in a post-enlargement Union’. He concludes that some of the chapters, notably those written by the editors themselves, break new conceptual ground. That is just what we need as we think again about the next direction we take collectively with the EU for the middle of the century.… (mere)