Michael Blauberger

• Professor (Associate) at University of Salzburg

This article analyses the European Labour Authority (ELA) to understand the strategies EU agencies can use to improve EU rule implementation. Theoretically, we depart from established EU implementation and compliance research, broadly distinguishing between enforcement, information and socialization strategies. Empirically, the analysis draws on 18...

In this study, we provide an overview of the recently established European Labour Authority (ELA), its goals and powers, before offering a preliminary analysis of ELA. In brief, ELA is an agency with the broad and important objective of improving the enforcement of mobile workers' rights in the EU, but with limited competences and resources. ELA es...

Major COVID-19 outbreaks in slaughterhouses brought the extent of migrant labour exploitation in the German meat sector to the limelight. Adopting a historical-institutionalist perspective, we argue that the COVID-19 pandemic marked a critical juncture for migrant workers, albeit with highly contingent effects. Only in the meat sector could politic...

The free movement of people (FMP) was one of the first victims of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. Calls for better coordination often remained unheard in the initial phase of hectic border closures and mostly resulted in soft EU recommendations. Nevertheless, most restrictions on the FMP were lifted after summer 2020 and could be largely avoided i...

In this article, we trace Germany's recent reform (and its precursors) seeking to remedy precarious working conditions in the meat sector. Focusing on an extreme case of labour exploitation, and asking how unique it is, allows us to uncover which institutional features of EU Member States condition the liberalization effects of negative integration...

The free movement of people (FMP) has been a core principle of European Union (EU) integration since its beginnings, but it has recently become contested. This article traces the politicization of FMP, and the topics associated with it, over time and across countries. Rather than constituting a linear or uniform trend, we argue that the politicizat...

This paper traces the political debate about the export and the indexation of family benefits in the European Union (EU). We ask why such a technical legal issue has become salient in several EU member states. Explanations building on financial and political justifications prove to be insufficient. Rather, we argue, indexation has to be understood...

This chapter outlines a general research agenda for the study of interactions between judicial and political integration in the EU. In contrast to most EU legislative and transposition studies, we propose a comprehensive view which also takes into account judicial interpretation as well as administrative implementation of European rules. We illustr...

This contribution analyses if and under what conditions bottom-up pressures constrain the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Neofunctionalists famously explained the power of the Court by its use of ‘law as a mask and shield’. Due to its technical nature, the Court is able to mask the political substance of ‘integration through law’ and...

In order to tackle democratic backsliding in EU member states, the European Commission proposed a new financial conditionality in May 2018 that would allow the suspension of EU funds in cases of systematic rule of law infringements. This article seeks to evaluate the Commission’s proposal in terms of its chances at successfully deterring or redress...

Free movement and equal treatment of European Union (EU) citizens are among the core principles of European integration. If any further proof was needed, the Brexit referendum and its aftermath have demonstrated how politically salient these principles can become. However, despite their central role in European integration, little is known about th...

The European Union’s (EU) fundamental principles of free movement of persons and non-discrimination have long challenged the traditional closure of the welfare state. Whereas the relationship between the EU and the welfare state appeared largely reconciled before the grand enlargement of 2004, economic downturn and politicisation question the nexus...

Recent jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) marks a striking shift towards a more restrictive interpretation of EU citizens’ rights. The Court's turnaround is not only highly relevant for practical debates about ‘Social Europe’ or ‘welfare migration’, but also enlightening from a more general, theoretical viewpoint. Several recent s...

Recent jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) marks a striking shift towards a more restrictive interpretation of EU citizens’ rights. The Court’s turnaround is not only highly relevant for practical debates about ‘Social Europe’ or ‘welfare migration’, but also enlightening from a more general, theoretical viewpoint. Several recent s...

The citizenship jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice has raised hopes for a more social Europe and triggered fierce debates about ‘social tourism’. The article analyses how this case law is applied by EU member state administrations and argues that they are actively containing the Court’s influence. As a result, rather than reconciling th...

This article reviews recent advances in the study of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and its political impact at the European and member state levels. New quantitative as well as qualitative analyses show with great empirical precision that member state preferences guide the Court. The article summarises these findings, but argues that greater...

The European Union (EU) has to reconcile free movement rights with national welfare states. Case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has broadened rights to welfare of economically inactive or marginally active EU citizens. Applying the Court's jurisprudence, which is vague and specific at the same time, poses serious challenges for national...

Today, the European Union (EU) is confronting a new democratic deficit at the national level. A number of EU member states have experienced an erosion of democracy and the rule of law in recent years, most severely in Hungary and Poland. Drawing on different strands of political science research, the contributions to this section debate the strengt...

This article explores the potential efficacy and limitations of judicial mechanisms as tools to combat democratic backsliding in European Union (EU) member states. The article argues that more can be done to maximize the effectiveness of existing judicial tools, such as infringement proceedings brought to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) by the...

This article seeks to explain how the European Union (EU) – by challenging national defence offsets – managed to move into a highly sensitive policy area under formerly exclusive Member State competence. Whereas major accounts of integration depict defence policy as a least likely case, our process-tracing analysis shows that the EU's recent challe...

Der Europäische Gerichtshof (EuGH) ist ein zentraler Akteur im europäischen Integrationsprozess, indem er die Einhaltung bestehender mitgliedstaatlicher Vereinbarungen sichert und darüber hinaus durch seine integrationsfreundliche Interpretation weiterentwickelt. In diesem Beitrag wird die Rolle des EuGH als „Motor der Integration“ im Bereich des s...

Governance through EU regulatory networks is a compelling example of orchestration: the European Commission enlists regulatory networks as intermediaries to achieve regulatory governance goals, rather than pursuing these goals by itself. Our contribution addresses two key issues central to the orchestration framework. First, why does one of the mos...

One major transformation of the constitutional state is the loosening of the nexus between territory and law. The growing density of European Union (EU) and international law and the interpenetration of domestic legal orders have led to an increasingly complex system of overlapping legal orders. Consequently, in order to determine which law applies...

This article analyzes the political impact of the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) case law concerning the free movement of EU citizens and their cross-border access to social benefits. Public debates about ‘welfare migration’ or ‘social tourism’ often fluctuate between populist hysteria and outright denial, but they obscure the real political and...

European regulatory networks (ERNs) play a central role in the formulation, deliberation, and implementation of EU policies and have, thus, become objects of investigation in a fast-growing scholarly literature. We identify two shortcomings – one conceptual, one theoretical – in the literature on ERNs: First, we argue that the principal–agent appro...

This symposium item belongs to a section headed: SYMPOSIUM: CONVENTIONAL WISDOMS UNDER CHALLENGE – REVIEWING THE EU’S DEMOCRATIC DEFICIT IN TIMES OF CRISIS, which also includes Integration without Representation? The European Parliament and the Reform of Economic Governance in the EU by Berthold Rittberger (DOI: 10.1111/jcms.12185), Parliaments in...

Negative integration through the expansive interpretation of European market freedoms is said to undermine domestic social regulation – by vertically imposing a strictly liberal interpretation of EU rules and by pushing EU member states into horizontal regulatory competition. This article analyses domestic policy responses to one particularly promi...

European regulatory networks (ERNs) play a central role in the formulation, deliberation and implementation of EU policies and have thus become objects of investigation in fast growing scholarly literature. We identify two shortcomings – one conceptual, one theoretical – in the literature on ERNs: First, we argue that the principal-agent approach,...

The power of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to promote European integration through law has been broadly acknowledged, but the court’s domestic impact has received less attention and remains contested. In particular, the ambiguity of many ECJ judgments is said to have two opposed effects: According to one logic, legal ambiguity enables nationa...

Mit diesem Kapitel möchten wir zum einen in die wesentlichen Aspekte der historischen Entwicklung der EU sowie der europäischen Institutionenordnung einführen. Zum anderen skizzieren wir die wichtigsten theoretischen Diskussionen und definieren damit zugleich den Rahmen, in dem sich die verschiedenen folgenden Kapitel bewegen.

Die Komitologie ist von allen in diesem Band analysierten Verwaltungsstrukturen am wenigsten eindeutig mit den Kategorien zentral oder dezentral zu beschreiben: Während die Verwaltung durch die Kommission (besonders dort, wo sie alleine Politiken implementiert) als zentral bezeichnet werden kann und vor allem die Verwaltungsnetzwerke stark dezentra...

Wenn von der Europäischen Union die Rede ist, spielt die Verwaltung oft nur eine untergeordnete Rolle oder sie wird sehr verzerrt wahrgenommen. Europa, das sind zunächst die Gipfeltreffen der Staats- und Regierungschefs, auf denen, begleitet von großem Medienaufgebot, in nächtlichen Marathonsitzungen neue Verträge oder Krisenmaßnahmen ausgehandelt...

Wenn in politischen Diskussionen von „Brüssel“ die Rede ist, ist meist die Europäische Kommission gemeint. Journalisten und Politiker vermitteln dabei häufig das Bild eines monolithischen europäischen Machtzentrums, in dem „Europäische Bürokraten“, losgelöst von nationalen Regierungen und Verwaltungen, die Politik in Europa nach ihren Vorstellungen...

Dieses Kapitel beschäftigt sich mit der grenzüberschreitenden Kooperation zwischen Verwaltungseinheiten der EU-Mitgliedstaaten. Noch deutlicher als in den vorausgehenden Kapiteln liegt das Hauptaugenmerk damit auf nationalen Beamten und Behörden, während eine supranationale Komponente, etwa durch Beteiligungsrechte der Europäischen Kommission oder...

Auch wenn man Verwaltungen traditionell zunächst im nationalen und subnationalen Kontext lokalisiert, gibt es im Rahmen der Europäischen Union heute, wie in diesem Band gezeigt, nennenswerte Verwaltungsstrukturen. Der Terminus Verwaltungsstrukturen erfasst dabei, dass es sich eben nicht um eine einheitliche, durchweg hierarchisch gegliederte Verwal...

Agenturen sind in den letzten Jahren zu einem festen Bestandteil des administrativen Gefüges der EU geworden. Zwar wurde die erste Agentur in der EG bereits in den 1970er Jahren gegründet, doch vor allem seit den 1990er Jahren kam eine Vielzahl weiterer Agenturen hinzu. Insbesondere dieses rasche quantitative Wachstum von EU-Agenturen hat das polit...

Verwaltungen spielen eine zentrale Rolle bei der Formulierung und Umsetzung von Politiken. Mit Fortschreiten der europäischen Integration sind über die letzten Jahrzehnte auch europäische Verwaltungsstrukturen entstanden, die eine wichtige Rolle in der europäischen Mehrebenenpolitik spielen. Die zentralen Verwaltungsstrukturen in der Europäischen U...

The smooth adoption of the European Union (EU) defence procurement directive in 2009 is puzzling, because member states had fiercely opposed legislation for the sensitive defence-industrial sector before. We argue that the Commission's strategic usage of judicial politics changed member states' opportunity structure and, by this, transformed a bloc...

The power of the European Court of Justice to promote European integration through law has been broadly acknowledged, but the Court's domestic impact receives less attention and remains contested. In particular, the ambiguity of many judgments is said to have two opposed effects: According to one logic, legal ambiguity enables national policy-maker...

The Commission's relative autonomy in rule-making and enforcement is central for understanding the dynamics of EU competition policy. This chapter explains the evolution of Commission control from a historical-institutionalist perspective: Member states' basic rationale for assigning independent powers in competition policy to the European Commissi...

This article analyses EU member state political responses to ECJ challenges. Faced with high consensus requirements at the European level, member states often have to respond unilaterally and explore how to pursue autonomous regulatory goals in ‘EU-compatible’ ways. Member states' domestic responses to one prominent series of ECJ judgments (Laval,...

Wenn immer mehr politische Entscheidungen jenseits staatlicher Grenzen getroffen werden, dann sollte nicht nur staatliches Regieren, sondern auch die Politik internationaler Organisationen den Anforderungen demokratischen Regierens genügen. In diesem Buch befassen wir uns mit der Frage, ob bzw. Inwieweit internationale Organisationen diesem Anspruc...

Der Begriff der Demokratie enthält neben beschreibenden, auch wertende Elemente. Damit gehört er zu einer Klasse von Begriffen, über deren Bedeutung nur schwer Konsens herzustellen ist. Trotz dieser Schwierigkeit versuchen wir in diesem Kapitel, den Begriff des demokratischen Regierens zumindest in seinen Grundzügen zu umreißen und die inhaltlichen...

Es gibt nur wenige internationale Organisationen, denen so vehement die demokratische Legitimität abgesprochen wird wie der Welthandelsorganisation (World Trade Organisation, kurz: WTO). Die Bilder, die zur Beschreibung der WTO verwendet werden, sind entsprechend deutlich. So bezeichnen Fatoumata Jawara und Aileen Kwa (2003) die WTO als „Teufel“ un...

„Wir, die Völker der Vereinten Nation (…)“ sind die ersten Worte der Präambel der Charta der Vereinten Nationen (VN) – dem Gründungsdokument der geographisch und thematisch umfassendsten internationalen Organisation. Die beiden obigen Zitate drücken die Spannung aus, die in diesen Worten enthalten ist: Während die einen die VN zuerst als ein Forum...

In diesem Kapitel befassen wir uns mit dem empirischen und normativen Hintergrund der Diskussionen über das Demokratiedefizit der internationalen Politik.

Internationale Organisationen stehen im Zentrum der Diskussion über das "Demokratiedefizit" internationaler Politik. Während politische Entscheidungen zunehmend auf internationaler Ebene getroffen werden, zweifeln Kritiker immer wieder an der Legitimation dieser Entscheidungen. Das Buch führt ein in die Diskussion über demokratisches Regieren "jens...

Das Europäische Parlament sei kein Parlament im Sinne einer freiheitlichen Demokratie, die Mitglieder der Europäischen Kommission handelten wie europäische Minister, obwohl sie nicht ausreichend durch demokratische Wahl legitimiert seien, über Absprachen im Europäischen Rat umgingen nationale Regierungen ihre demokratisch gewählten Parlamente und d...

[enter Abstract Body]Starting from existing accounts on candidate country and Member state compliance, the compliance record of the Central and Eastern European countries in the field of state aid policy is puzzling. Despite allegedly low compliance costs in areas of negative integration and despite the European Union’s (EU) powerful instrument of...

As long as there is no effective state aid control outside the EU, the European Commission faces a dilemma: either European firms will be disadvantaged in global competition by strict EU rules, or the Commission will come under pressure to relax the rules, thereby running the risk that fair competition within the EU will be undermined. As a consequ...

Critical accounts of EU politics diagnose various asymmetries resulting from the dynamics of integration: (1) European integration is dominated by judicial and executive politics rather than legislative politics. (2) The constitutionalization of European Treaty freedoms provides an opportunity structure for individuals claiming their rights, but th...

As a result of international legalization, the potential for conflicts of overlapping jurisdictions has multiplied vertically between national and international law, as well as horizontally between national and foreign law. In competition control, the latter type of horizontal overlap between US and EU jurisdictions is significant, but very few con...

European state aid control, a part of competition policy, typically follows the logic of negative integration. It constrains the potential for member states to distort competition by reducing their ability to subsidise industry. In addition, this paper argues, ambiguous Treaty rules and heterogeneous member state preferences have enabled the Europe...

Nachdem im vorausgehenden Kapitel die Integration im Beihilfebereich analysiert wurde, steht im Folgenden die Europäisierung nationaler Beihilfepolitik im Vordergrund: Welche Auswirkungen hat die europäische Beihilfekontrolle in den neuen Mitgliedstaaten?

Michael Blauberger analysiert aus politikwissenschaftlicher Perspektive das Zusammenspiel von europäischer Beihilfekontrolle und nationaler Beihilfepolitik. So werden die Grundlagen und die Entwicklung der europäischen Beihilfekontrolle im Spannungsfeld zwischen freiem Wettbewerb und anderen Politikzielen rekonstruiert. Anschließend zeigt der Autor...

Die Verlagerung der Europaforschung von Fragen der Integration stärker hin zu Fragen des politischen Systems der EU und dessen Auswirkungen auf die nationale Politik (policies, politics und polities) zeigt sich besonders deutlich am Wachstum der Europäisierungsliteratur (Green Cowles et al. 2001; Featherstone/Radaelli 2003). Trotz der Vielfalt euro...

Abstract European state aid control, a part of competition policy, typically follows the logic of negative integration. It significantly constrains the potential for Member States to distort competition by reducing their ability to subsidize industry. In addition, this paper argues, ambiguous Treaty rules and heterogeneous Member States' preference...

In this article, a broad conception of forms of Europeanisation is developed, which points towards neglected modes of governance and to the policy areas to which they are applied. Whereas the dominant implementation and compliance literature primarily studies the effects of positive integration, this contribution focuses on negative integration. Th...

This paper analyzes the impact of European state aid control in the new Member states. Two main arguments are derived from comparisons of state aid policies over time and across countries: First, changes in CEECs’ state aid policies can mainly be traced backed to the (anticipated) impact of post-accession state aid control by the European Commissio...

Zugl.: München, Universiẗat, Magisterarbeit, 2004.