Multi-level governance in the European Union

Résumé du document

The former French President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, once stated that the European Union was an “unidentified political object”. This phrase highlights the complexity of the EU polity, which various theories have tried to capture and which has sparked controversy among the students of European integration. Among those theories, two models emerged between the late eighties and the early nineties, focusing on the relationship between supranational, national and subnational institutions, drawing opposite conclusions on the role of these actors in EU policy making. The term “multi-level governance” was coined by authors such as Gary Marks and Liesbet Hooghe, to describe European integration as “a polity creating process in which authority and policy-making influence are shared across multiple levels of government – subnational, national and supranational”. This model points at the dilution of national sovereignty and at the autonomous role of the European Parliament, the European Commission, and the European Court of Justice.

Extraits

[...] However, the years that followed saw no further increase in the influence of infranational authorities on the European regional policy, which even suffered some sort of setback. The next reform of the structural funds, in 1993, left unchanged the powers of central governments in this policy sector, and in 1999, the new regulations reduced to some extent the Commission's role in the management and monitoring of the structural fund programme[7]. According to the multi-level governance theory, the influence of regional actors is prominent in the implementation stage of the regional policy, but a closer look will provide a more balanced view. [...]

[...] cit., p Gary Marks, François Nielsen, Leonard Rau, Jane Solk, “Competencies, cracks and conflicts: regional mobilization in the European Union”, in Gary Marks, Fritz Scharpf, Philippe Schmitter, Wolfgang Streeck, Governance in the European Union (Sage, 1996), p Gary Marks, Liesbet Hooghe, Kermit Blank, Op. cit., p Ibid., p Ibid., p Ibid., p. [...]

[...] Here, the case seems stronger for the multi-level governance model. The successive treaties have indeed set up very particular institutions and rules, different from any other international organization, which makes European integration a unique phenomenon. But member states, through the Council of ministers still exert a large part of the European legislative powers and have domains, such as the Common Foreign and Security Policy, where there decide alone. Along with the Commission, it retains some of the executive powers, and controls those of the Commission through the “comitology”. [...]

[...] The multi-level governance theory has contributed to the study of European integration in a stimulating way, by putting the emphasis on the fact that decision-making competencies in the European Union are shared by actors at different levels and no longer monopolized by state executives. If it seems too excessive on its account of the movement of regionalization across Europe, it sheds light on the fact that regions are associated with European integration and are pushing for a greater say at the European level. [...]

[...] 25-26 Enrico Gualini, “Challenges to multi-level governance: contradictions and conflicts in the Europeanization of Italian regional policy”, Journal of European Public Policy (Vol 2003), pp. 616-636 Gary Marks, Liesbet Hooghe, Kermit Blank, “European integration from the 1980s: state-centric v. multi-level governance”, Journal of Common Market Studies (Vol 1996), pp. 341-378 Gary Marks, François Nielsen, Leonard Rau, Jane Solk, “Competencies, cracks and conflicts: regional mobilization in the European Union”, in Gary Marks, Fritz Scharpf, Philippe Schmitter, Wolfgang Streeck, Governance in the European Union (Sage, 1996), pp. [...]