Since the Eastern enlargement in 2004, the EU has paid exceptional attention to strengthening civil society organizations (CSOs) in new member and candidate states, including Turkey. While the EU's ...contribution to Turkish CSO empowerment is ambivalent in general, women's organizations have benefitted from the opportunities connected to the accession process. However, since 2007, the AKP government has been hesitating to further the EU-membership project. Distancing at the state level has also resulted in the weakening impact of the EU on civil society. We argue that de-Europeanization can be observed in securing financial and technical assistance, weakening normative power of the EU, and changing perceptions towards internationalization and Europeanization. Moreover, distancing from international donors has resulted in changing nature of the relationship between CSOs and local donors, both state and private.
The European Union’s (EU) mission to promote its idea of European-ness across the continent led to its eastern enlargements and later the Eastern Partnership of the European Neighbourhood Policy. ...Along the way, this mission encountered competing norms and regional integration efforts shaped by sociocultural and historical ties connecting state, society and territory. These ties inform the barriers to Europeanisation and the backsliding from EU-managed policy reforms. They can illuminate where the EU’s self-image and constructed European identity do not reflect perspectives abroad or those of EU member countries. Such inconsistencies in the EU-constructed identity that shaped related policy mechanisms prevented sustainable regional transformation and integration. Further policy integration and future EU enlargement remain strong possibilities, as does the risk of basing the next generation of policy mechanisms on a distorted image of the EU and its capacity to transform. In this article, I apply a novel critical theory perspective on the entwined processes of de- and reterritorialisation to this context, and argue that this perspective clarifies and informs the EU’s aim to transform and unite Europe.
The Europeanisation of domestic law calls for a classical methodology to ‘update’ the established traditions of the law. The relationship between European directives and national law is difficult, ...since directives do apply, but European legal texts need to be implemented into national law. Whilst directives are not binding on private individuals, there is no direct third-party effect, but only an ‘indirect effect’. This effect is influenced by the stipulations of the ECJ, but is ultimately determined in accordance with methodical principles of national law. The ECJ uses a broad term of interpretation of the law. In contrast, in German and Austrian legal methodology the wording of a provision defines the dividing line between interpretation and further development of the law. The article reveals how legal scholars and the case-law have gradually shown in recent decades a greater willingness to shift from a narrow, traditional boundary of permissible development of the law to a modern line of case-law regarding the boundary of directive-compliant, permissible development of the law.
By bringing together the literatures on Europeanisation and minority studies, this article illustrates the centrality of actors representing national minorities as a key to understand Europeanisation ...of minority politics today. Minority politics is becoming Europeanised indeed, however, not in the ways commonly expected. And although the EU repeatedly fails to develop a clear minority policy, an actor-centred approach adopted in this study helps to reveal how minority actors extend their political strategies to the European level through different channels and how they exploit various opportunities stemming from European-level politics. Jacquot and Woll’s concept of ‘usages of Europe’ not only enables us to trace how actors multiply channels and arenas of participation, but it also helps to spot the emergence of tactics of experimentation with European-level norms and rules, contributing to an acquisition of new roles among minority actors and supporting an actorness formation among those active. As the actors engage in criticising EU institutions, they develop tactics of responsibilising which in turn affects their minority agendas and the actors themselves. In this respect, this study contributes to developing the weakly studied literature about minority agency and Europeanisation.
This article focuses on the interaction between local factors and the process of Europeanization as a factor of both residents’ political orientations and public policy in the Kosice and Presov ...border regions of Slovakia and the Zakarpattia region of Ukraine. The study used data collected via the Delphi method along with statistical empirics, contemporary notions of Europeanization, and border and local studies to find answers to the main research questions. Local factors resulting from the historical path of development have a significant influence on residents’ political culture and public policy, as demonstrated by nepotism, a general hostility toward elites, and a difference in activism between urban and rural areas. However, there is already evidence that the political culture in the Slovak- Ukrainian borderland and the relevant policy process have been significantly impacted by Europeanization. Both public participation in local and regional development and the influence of non-governmental organizations serve as examples of this trend. Changes in the political culture of borderland residents under the influence of other factors are not, however, the focus of this article, and will be an issue for future research.
Despite the lack of competence on the matter, through time the European Union (EU) developed a number of spatially relevant concepts, initiatives and sectoral directives. An EU territorial governance ...framework progressively consolidated and the Member States gradually adapted in order to reflect its growing complexity. Building on the results of the ESPON COMPASS project, the article sheds light on this process, often referred to as Europeanization of territorial governance. To do so, it presents and compares the perceived impact that a number of sectoral directives, spatial policies and guidance documents developed at the EU level plays in shaping territorial governance and spatial planning in the 32 countries that participate to the ESPON programme.
Administrative regimes are no longer isolated phenomena: they are constantly confronted with international influences, which shape the internal structure and system of the states. The cooperation ...between the European Union and the Member States’ administration is today a kind of convergence in principles. This is what the EU expects from the candidate countries and in the neighbourhood policy. The main question of the study is whether the content of the principles used by the EU is cognisable and consistent. The study covers two policy instruments: the SIGMA project, which is a joint EU–OECD collaboration, and the comparative legal activities of the ReNEUAL. These instruments testify two completely different attitudes: one does not explain the principle but holds it accountable, the other seeks the means to understand its content and the reasons for the differences in interpretations. Both programs have undergone internal development, but while SIGMA has moved away from its administrative procedural roots, ReNEUAL has confirmed it. The paper is another argument in favour of the need for administrative research using the tools of comparative law.
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