Differentiated Integration in the European Union

Much has been written about differentiated integration (DI) in the European Union. DI involves particular member states being temporarily exempt or excluded from certain EU laws and policies, or seeking an opt-out in the context of a treaty revision. Yet many empirical, normative, and theoretical questions open, and this section sets out to address a number of them. A first set of question relates to how DI is perceived by different actors. There still is very little knowledge as to how citizens and political actors such parties and governments think of DI. Given DI is a way of allowing member states to not participate in specific policies for either economic or sovereignty reasons, and as a result is seen as an answer to the democratic deficit of the EU and increasing levels of Euroscepticism, it is important to learn more about public opinion and DI, and whether citizens think of it favourably or not. Learning more about how citizens think about DI will help inform both the views that political parties and governments take on DI, another area that we know little about so far. The positions parties take on DI have hardly been researched which is surprising given their representative function. Finally, governments are the actors which ultimately make decisions on whether a state decides in an EU policy or not, and whilst there is abundant literature on specific policies in which DI exist such the Euro or Schengen, this literature normally focuses on the policy or on decision-making processes, rather than on its differentiated character and how governments or states relate to the increasingly differentiated EU. What can we learn about how national identities shape discourses of DI? Are they more or less important than partisan differences? Finally, it is also of interest what the views of academic experts are on the matter. We are used to hiding our normative preferences behind rigorous research designs and abstract theories. But our preferences as regards DI in the EU are of course heavily influenced by our more general approach to European integration, i.e. whether we align ourselves with a narrative of supranationalism or of intergovernmentalism. A next bloc of questions that is of interest is about DI in core state powers. How has DI proceeded here, particularly between ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of the Eurozone, Schengen, and defence policies? Can we observe different state transformations within member states as a result of DI in this policy areas? Thirdly, we need to know more about flexibility in DI, both in institutional terms and implementation-wise. Do different MS get different types of exemptions, and are different policies characterised by different forms of DI? Do we see a culture of differentiated implementation developing in policies that do not belong to core state powers? How much flexibility of implementation does DI offer in different policy areas? Fourthly, external DI is an area that remains under-researched. External DI refers to arrangements whereby the EU cooperates with non EU states in select policy areas. Important examples are Switzerland and Norway in the Single Market. Whilst these two countries have been the object of research, we know little about external DI in regard to states like the Ukraine, the Balkan, Turkey, and indeed, the UK. Which are the norms that should guide such cooperation and how does it play out in practice? A fifth set of questions that remains under-explored revolves around the legitimacy of DI. Is DI a source of autonomy or of domination? Does DI allow member and even non-member state democracies to make choices they would otherwise be unable to make? Does DI make it easier to align commitments to integration with what each national democracy can justify to its own publics? Does DI reduce the need for national democracies to sacrifice preferences, values and even identities in order to achieve any given level of common solutions to collective action problems? Or can DI, be a source of democracy-on-democracy domination? Can ‘outs’ use DI to free ride on the provision of positive externalities by ‘ins’? Can ‘ins’ conversely, use DI to exclude others; to cartelise gains from co-operation and to impose negative externalities? What standards of fairness and democracy might we expect DI to meet? And how are actors’ views of DI socially constructed in the different environments in which they are embedded? Last but not least, DI by some is viewed as a precursor of disintegration. The disintegration of the UK made the door wide open to theorise disintegration in more systematic ways. The section will therefore also examine the notion of European disintegration from conceptual, empirical, and normative perspectives in order to explore its potential as a systematic category. It will address issues such as the concept’s relation to differentiated integration; causes and consequences of disintegration; democratic backsliding or Euroscepticism as expressions of disintegration; and challenges of democracy and legitimacy associated with disintegration.