Jcms-Journal of Common Market Studies最新文献

In and beyond Europe, pro-gender and anti-gender causes are gaining momentum. This article asks the following: How do (anti-)gender agendas emerge within the European Union (EU), and how are they projected beyond the Union's borders? These questions are addressed via a contrapuntal approach, which, we argue, can help to foster multi-directional learning in (gender) policy debates. Analytically, the method entails listening to plural voices in – and across – macro, meso and micro levels of analysis. Normatively, the method supports engagement of lesser heard voices. Applying the approach at the EU scale and vis-à-vis two case studies (Hungary and the Netherlands), we identify several, counter-intuitive patterns with implications for gender-based mobilisation: namely, that emphasis on inclusion in EU gender equality promotion, paradoxically, can lead to exclusion of a wider range of gender perspectives and that anti-gender mobilisation entails forms of co-option as well as exclusion.

Scholars have paid significant attention to the ‘geopoliticisation’ and ‘securitisation’ turn in EU trade policy. As part of this shift, the EU has begun to develop autonomous trade defence instruments under the ‘Open Strategic Autonomy’ toolbox, to find a new balance between security and competitiveness. This article offers a thorough descriptive and discursive framing analysis of a broad dataset comprising speeches and press releases from EU institutions and mainstream media that link China to the development of these trade defence instruments. This provides a comprehensive account of the ‘China factor’ in accounting for the enactment of these instruments, showing that it precedes other factors generally associated with the geopolitical turn in EU trade policy, like the COVID-19 and Ukraine crises. It reveals that the foundations of the link between the China factor and the EU's trade defence instruments are deeply tied together at the level of communicative discourse, which provides insights on the heterogeneity of narratives on China in EU trade discourse, challenging the popular claim that the instruments are ‘country-agnostic’ at the level of communicative discourse. The findings of this article are significant for understanding China's influence on EU trade and economic policy.

This article examines the phenomenon of ‘co-ordinative Europeanisation’, a mode of governance characterised by close collaboration between European Union (EU) institutions and national executives. It argues that, despite the significant practical advantages that this form of governance affords in times of crisis, co-ordinative Europeanisation raises significant questions about the constitutional limits and long-term legal implications that it creates. Drawing on doctrinal legal research, this investigation suggests that co-ordinative Europeanisation erodes the authority of EU law to delimit public power, both during and after crisis. To substantiate this argument, the article traces the legal evolution of two key instruments of EU crisis governance, namely, the implementation of travel bans to the Schengen area and the establishment of the Recovery and Resilience Facility. In this vein, it seeks to show that co-ordinative Europeanisation creates an institutional practice that allows key actors to jointly advance interpretations of EU law that test, and at times strain, the limits of the legally permissible.

The United Kingdom's departure from the European Union has significantly reshaped the UK–EU security relationship, including both foreign, security and defence policy and police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters. Whilst Brexit has mainly been discussed in the academic literature as a form of disengagement from the EU, recent developments indicate a nuanced process of selective reconstruction and re-engagement in the current post-Brexit period. This editorial introduces the concept of ‘re-engagement’ as a distinct analytical framework to capture the unique dynamics emerging in the wake of Brexit, which are distinct from both prior EU membership and the disengagement experienced during the withdrawal period. Specifically, it proposes seven characteristics of re-engagement that can contribute to a greater understanding of post-Brexit security co-operation: (1) the perceived directionality of the co-operation, (2) increased re-institutionalisation incentives, (3) political path dependence, (4) temporal distance, (5) institutional change, (6) alternatives to re-engagement and (7) sustainability. By reflecting on these seven characteristics in the context of contemporary developments in the UK–EU security relationship, the editorial underscores how past political trajectories and evolving geopolitical contexts, such as the Ukraine war, have shaped current co-operative practices and enabled different outcomes for different policy areas within the UK–EU security relationship.

The EU's ‘geo-economic turn’ has led to a blurring of the boundaries between EU trade and security policies. Against this background, this article examines whether a new institutional balance is emerging in the field of EU economic security policies, in particular, between the Commission, the Council and the European Parliament as the three principal EU institutions. Specifically, we look at the examples of the EU anti-coercion instrument and the investment screening framework. Both instruments indicate a closer link between the areas of economic and security policy, which have traditionally been under the control of the Commission and the Council respectively. Using ‘institutional balance’ as a descriptive term for the balance of powers between the EU's institutions, we discuss how the right of initiative, co-ordination procedures, decision-making and implementation arrangements are organised in particular ways in both instruments. We find that a new institutional balance is emerging as a hybrid between the procedures prevalent in trade defence and sanctions, respectively. We explain this new institutional balance as the outcome of different institutional interests of the key actors, moderated by the existing legal and procedural context at EU and global level. The emerging institutional arrangements are difficult to qualify as clearly ‘intergovernmental’ or ‘supranational’. Elements of centralisation co-exist with pockets of national control and co-ordination requirements between the different levels. Bargaining between the key actors is driven not only by institutional self-interests but also by considerations of strengthening the EU's resilience in a geo-economic environment.

The article argues that considering Eurocentrism as a meta-paradigm helps scholars to be conscious about assumptions, simplifications and distortions that undermine scholars' abilities to analyse European foreign policy. The article integrates several conceptualisations of decentring that originate from both postcolonial and more mainstream scholarship. It explains how analytical limitations and simplifications can be overcome through various interrelated stages of a decentring approach, whilst avoiding recentring or merely ‘decentring by addition’. The article concludes by arguing for a widening of ‘allyship in diversity’ – not only amongst but also beyond critical approaches – by reaching out to more mainstream scholarship in order to increase the prospect of a paradigm shift in the analysis of European foreign policy.