B009867 - POLITICHE PUBBLICHE DELL'UNIONE EUROPEA

English

CONTENUTI. (A) Analisi del Processo di Policy Making dell'Unione Europea. (B) Analisi delle maggiori politiche dell' Unione Europea.

Il corso prevede un esteso numero di materiale di studio in temrini di Documentazione e di Letteratura specializzata. Onde evitare inutili ripetizioni, si consiglia di consultare il "PROGRAMMA ESTESO".

(a) Frontale
(b) Visite a Siti Web della UE
(c) Discussioni in Classe

Verifica Apprendimento. Composizione del voto.
Frequenza = 10%. Prova Intermedia = 30%. Prova Finale = 60%.

Dal momento che il corso è in inglese accludo il programma in Inglese.

CLM RISE. AA 2012-2013. European Union’s Public Policies. Giorgio Natalicchi.
[ EN Ver. 2 -- 16.09.2012 ]. Syllabus
[ if needed some changes will be made during the course ]

Why study European Union’s policies?

EC/ EU treaties are essentially made of policy objectives and a set of rules (or institutions) to achieve them. Institutions formally define the tasks of the organization (competencies); the powers of each actor; and the procedures they will follow to make decisions. The treaties – at the beginning - also define general principles on which EU action will be based. What makes EU treaties special, if compared to national constitutions, is that while the latter are “mainly” made of principles and institutions (policies are basically absent), the former are “mainly” made of policy goals. The proportion of the two components is the opposite in EU treaties and national constitutions. Institutions are a crucial element, but overall, EU treaties seem highly concerned with policies.
Why is it so? The answer is in some way connected to the expectations of the founding fathers. Monnet, Schuman, De Gasperi, and Adenauer, did not intend to create a new state. They saw the early communities as tools to maintain peace and facilitate the economic recovery of Europe. These two goals were linked. The common market (the core project) would propel trade across the member states (MSs). Increased trade would expand firms markets and create wealth. The improvement of living standards would be linked to the integration process, and the link would dissuade national politicians from using force to resolve disputes.
Consciously or unconsciously, the founding fathers chose the functionalist over the federalist approach. The political structure of the organization mattered less than the tasks to be performed. Tasks would define structure, and not vice versa - as it was with the establishment of European nation-states. Perhaps, if successful, cooperation would expand to other policy area, and the organization’s structure would adapt to the expanded goals. Following this strategy, the founding fathers did not have to define a final structure (a federation, a confederation, a simple association, etc.). Institutional changes did occur from one to other treaty in parallel with functional tasks expansion but nobody ever expected that they were the final ones. Meanwhile peace was never challenged.
The answer to the initial question seems now evident. The EU – for better or worse – has been up to now more of a policy-maker than of a federal government. Professor Fritz Scharpf’s hypothesis on the bases of EU’s legitimacy confirms this conclusion. The EU derives its legitimacy not from the input side of the system (ex.: the election of a representative government). Rather, it derives it from the output side of the system, from what it does and the success of its policies. The “form” of the organization is crucial, but to the extent that it affects policy outcomes.

Phases.

The objective of the course is to inform how policies are made at the EU level.
First, we will analyse: (a) The EU Policy Making Process. (b) The Evolution of EU policies and their linkages. (c) The Regulatory Role of the EU in Europe.
Second, concrete cases to reinforce the general knowledge gained in the first part. (a) Focus on regulatory policies in strategic sectors, in particular, the Network Industries: energy, transport and ICT-telecoms. (b) In depth analysis of EU’s ICT-Telecoms policy – EU’s regulation of ICT-Telecoms Markets (b) Europe 2020’s European Digital Agenda.
Below is a detailed plan with indications for study material

1. Introduction

This section is aimed at those who have not yet attended an introductory course such as European Union’s Politics, European Inion Law, or European Integration Economics. However a good review – before getting into the more technical stuff - will not hurt anybody.

1.1 Basic Concepts

Without clear basic concepts, you will wonder around without making any sense. (a) The political system according to David Easton. (b) Policies as political system’s output. (c) Much talk about different things. What is the meaning of international political integration? (d) Integration and Disintegration. (e) The meaning of political, economic and sociological integration. (f) Integration at the international, regional, national, level (g) Consensual and non-consensual Integration (h) Dimensions of the process of integration in Europe, in terms of: territory, scope of authority, and level of authority.

Study Material (available in the Social Sciences Library)
(a) Easton, David, A Systems Analysis of Political Life, John Wiley, 1965, chap. 2, 17-33
(b) Schmitter, Philippe C., The Dependent Variable: Actor Integration Strategies. A sub-section of, A Revised Theory of Regional Integration, in Lindberg, Leon and Scheingold (eds.), Regional Integration: Theory and Research. Special Issue on International Organization, Vol. XXIV, No. 4 (Autumn 1970).
(c) Attinà, Fulvio e Natalicchi, Giorgio, L’Unione Europea: Istituzioni, Governo, Politiche, Seconda Edizione. Il Mulino, 2010. Capitolo 1.

1.2 Dimensions of EU policies

Are classifications useful ? Yes, only if they add value. In his widely read article, Mark Pollack borrows Theodore Lowi’s classic model to distinguish between Regulatory, Distributive and Re-Distributive, and Institutional policies of the EU. In this case the classification is helpful because it demonstrates how that the same actor may play a stronger or weaker role in different types of policy, or that different types of policies are characterized by different types of interaction among actors. However I would warn students against forced simplifications and their misleading effects. Rather than a strict division among various policy types (regulatory, distributive and re-distributive, constitutional) I rather see various dimensions of a single policy (a regulatory dimension, a distributive dimension, … and so forth). We will verify that in class.

Study Material (available in the Social Sciences Library)
(a) Pollack, Mark, “Creeping competence: the expanding agenda of the EC“, Journal of European Public Policy (JEPP), Vol. 14, No. 2, 1994, pp. 95 - 145.

1.3 Historical overview of the major policies of the EU

This section focuses on birth and growth of EU policies and on the linkage among them. There is no time for an in depth analysis of each and all policies. But you should be able to grasp the fundamentals of the main ones. And what’s more important, you will realize how EU policies are connected by logical threads. It is rather unlikely that you will understand a policy if you do not grasp its connections with the others. Also, you will find out that policies emerge from both internal and external forces and that these forces may differ in different points in time. The general overview will pay off, as it will place specific EU policies in a single wider framework. Even if just an overview, it will obviously take some time - roughly two, at max three, weeks of classes.

Study Material:
No specific readings are “required” in this section if you already know the main EU policies. If you do not, however, I would advise you to keep near you a reference while we go on. Rather than an anthology of individual policies, at this point, I would suggest a the classic historical analysis: Desmond Dinan’s, Europe Recast, A history of European Union, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Alternatively, you may want to consult Chapter 1 of our introductory manual (in Italian though), Attinà and Natalicchi (2010, see above). It is an extremely concise biography of EU policies, but it will help you. In any case, as a guide, we will use a short chronology that I will hand out to you in class. It is now in Italian, but we will translate it together in English as we go on.

2. EU Policy Making.
In this section we will focus on the EU Policy Process - that is, “how are policies made at the EU level?”.
Starting in the late 1970s, policy analysts set forth models of EU policy-making and corroborated them with analyses of specific policies. The first and most re-known series was the one by Helen Wallace, William Wallace and Carol Web Policy Making in the European Community [first edition, 1977 reprinted 1983; last edition, Policy Making in the European Union, 2010. Juliet Lodge’s Institutions and Policies of the European Community was published in 1983, and The European Community in Search for a Future, appeared in the late 1980s and the 1990s. Jeremy Richardson’s series, European Union: Power and Policy Making, began in the mid-1990s. All these, are not general manuals, but anthologies, with single experts writing about their own policy area. Finally, from the late 1980s, in the context of the plan for a Single Market, various “manuals” for political science and IR students were published which addressed EU history, institutions, policies, as well as theories of integration
Study Material.
(a) Pollack, Mark, Theorizing EU Policy Making, and, (b) Young, Alasdair, The European Policy Process in Comparative Perspective, resp. chapters 2 and 3, of, Helen Wallace, Mark Pollack and Alasdair Young (eds), Policy Making in the European Union, Sixth Edition, Oxford University Press, 2010.
(available in the social sciences library)
(c) Peterson John and Elisabeth Bomberg, Making Sense of EU Decision-Making, Chapter 1 of, Peterson J. and E. Bomberg, Decision Making in the European Union, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999.
(available in the social sciences library)

To highlight how specific policy measures take shape (including pre-legislative phases) a hand-out will be distributed in class.

3. The EU as a Regulatory State.
In this section, we’ll go further on from EU policy-making in general into specific EU policy areas – in this case into regulatory policies.
Most scholars agree that regulation is the prevalent activity of the EU. The Single Market, Competition Rules, and Common Commercial Policy (CCP), are three of the initial four core policies of the European Community. The fourth is certainly the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Of the four, the first three are classified as regulatory policies. Other regulatory policies the EU tried to implement were in the area of monetary exchange mechanisms. The “Snake” of the early 70s, aimed at creating a single currency by 1980 failed. However, from 1979, the less ambitious EMS (supported by the ECU and the ERM), aimed only at coordinating currencies, had a lot more success and survived until the EMU. Just the EMU, in the 1990s, would tackle successfully (we do not know for how long) the single currency, the Euro. All these are the product of financial/monetary policies, which in good part have a regulatory nature (see for example the Maastricht convergence criteria).
In the early 1970s, even if very timidly, took off the social and regional (later cohesion) policies. Regional policy, in time, would become the main redistributive tool of the EU matching the CAP in budgetary terms. Social policies (most of which have both a regulatory and a redistributive dimensions), with great difficulty, but helped by the Court, made the first steps.
But, as we all know, financial support to social policy in Europe, is by and large national. The protection of the environment (mainly of a regulatory nature) also made its first steps in the 1970s as a spin off from the UN conferences. Research and Development (R&D) (clearly distributive) became part of the EU agenda in the 1980s with the SEA. Yet, as for education, training, and industrial policies, R&D financing is basically in the hands of national governments and large firms. EU’s activities – though useful – cannot have a large impact on R&D. Let’s see what Europe 2020 will do. Net industries (telecoms, energy and transport), to different extents, are regulated by European Regulatory Frameworks (or Packages). The civil portion of Justice and Home Affairs, largely “communitarized” with Amsterdam, though of a non-commercial nature, is essentially regulatory. However Policing and Criminal Law, regulatory or not, are still by and large left to the MSs. All this is not to say that the EU is a regulatory agency. But we can certainly affirm that up to now (we’ll have to see later), has played its most crucial role in the regulatory arena. As professor G Majone points out, the fact that the EU budget is relatively small (relatively to national budgets) is a clear indication that the MSs see the EU as a delegate to regulate “something” rather than a provider of expensive support in the areas of welfare and security.
Study Material
(a) Baldwin Robert and Martin Cave, Understanding Regulation. Theory,Strategy, and Practice, Oxford, OUP, 1999. Ch. 2: why regulate, and Chap 3: explaining regulation.1- 33
(if not in the library a copy of the chapters will be made available)
(b) Majone, Giandomenico, The European Commission as Regulator, in Majone Giandomenico, Regulating Europe, Routledge, 1996. pp. 61-79
(available in the social sciences library).
(c) Monti, Mario, Concorrenza e Regolazione nell’Unione Europea, in, Tesauro, Giuseppe e Marco D’Alberti (a cura di), Regolazione e concorrenza, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2000, 75-86.
(available in the social sciences library).

4. The EU and the Network Industries.
With this section we proceed even further into specific areas of regulation – the Network Industries (Nets-Inds)
Nets-Inds deliver services through a network infrastructure. The best known are: transports, energy, telecoms, water, posts, and financial services. Nets-Inds are interesting for us for several reasons. First, they have two economic facets. (a) They represent a relevant portion of western countries’ GDP [for example, OECD, in 2000, estimated ICT to represent 3% to 5% of the GDP]. (b) Besides their intrinsic value, they are instrumental for the good functioning of other sectors of the economy. Furthermore, they perform a social function.
Their infrastructure carries either people or “things” that are essential for most of us and, as a public service, for about a century, they were controlled (and or regulated) by public authorities. However since the 1980s strong changes have transformed them. Basically, from public services they have also become commercial services. Their markets have been liberalized (i.e. opened to competition) and some of the former monopolist firms have been privatized. But they are of special interest to us because the role of the EU in such radical change was central. Key factors in the analysis will be: technology, markets and regulation. After this, we will focus on one of them, ICT-Telecoms which will be our case study with the goal of seeing all facets of EU policy making.

Study Material.

EU and the Nets Industries.
(a) Pelkmans, Jaques, European Integration. Methods and Economic Analysis, Third Edition, Prentice Hall, 2006, Chapter 8. The Internal Market for Network Industries, 151-173.
(a copy will be made available during the course).

Energy.
(a) Senior Nello, Susan, The European Union: Economics, Policies and History, 3rd Edition, Mc Graw-Hill, 2012, Chapter 14, Environmental and Energy Policies, 311-337
(available in the social sciences library)
b) Buchan, David, Energy Policy: Sharp Challenges and Rising Ambitions, chapter 15 of, Wallace, H., Pollack M., and Young, A.R., Policy Making in the European Union, 6th edition, Oxford, OUP, 2010, 357-380.
(available in the social sciences library).
NOTE. Updates – when needed – will be made through the EU website europea.eu.

Transport
(a) All Transp Modes  Senior Nello, Susan, The European Union: Economics, Policies and History, First Edition, Mc Graw-hill, 2005, Chapter 16, Transport Policy, pp. 333-348.
(a copy will be made available during the course) .
(b) All Transp Modes  Stevens, Handley (oldies but goodies), Transport Policy in the European Union, Palgrave, Macmillan, 2004. Chapters 3 and 4, 36-87. (optional)
(available in the social sciences library).
(c) All Transp Modes.  Kerwer, Dieter and Michael Teutsch, Transport Policy in the European Union, Chap. 2 of, Adrienne Héritier, Dieter Kerwer, Christoph Knill, Dirk Lehmekuhl, Michael Teutsch, and Anne Cécile Douillet, Differential Europe. The European Union Impact on National Policy Making, Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.
(a copy will be made available during the course)
(d) Rail Transport  Natalicchi,Giorgio, Le misure di liberalizzazione dell’Unione Europea nel settore del trasporto ferroviario, in, Tebaldi, Sandro (a cura di), La liberalizzazione dei trasporti ferroviari, Il Mulino, 2011, pp. 31-70. (optional)
(library order pending - a copy will be made available during the course)
NOTE. Updates – when needed – will be made through the EU website europea.eu.

ICT-Telecoms
(a) Natalicchi, Giorgio, Wiring Europe, Rowman & Littlefield, 2001, Chapter 2.European telecoms policy from the 1800s to the millennium, pp. 27-85.
(available in the social sciences library)

This section deals with the historical development of ICT-Telecoms’ technology, markets, and regulation - at the international and European level. We’ll cover a wide period – from the mid-1800s to the completion (in 1998) of the first European Regulatory Framework for Electronic Communications (ERF-EC) - a set of legal acts that define rights, obligations and procedures for governments, independent national regulatory agencies, firms, and consumers, throughout the EU territory. We will also deal with the proposal for the second ERF-EC (2001). Only one reading in this section, as the next section will deal exclusively with EU ICT-Telecoms.
NOTE. Updates – when needed – are available @ the EU website europea.eu.

5. EU’s ICT-Telecoms Policy

This section deals exclusively with EU’s ICT-Telecoms Policy. Sections 5.1 and 5.2 will analyse the second (2002) regulatory package and the final revised package of 2009.
To this purpose we will use: (a) the legal acts (or at least their summary) available on the EU web site “europa.eu”, and (b) the analyses of specialized legal scholars. In section 5.3 we will attempt to draw some theoretical conclusions. Section 5.4 goes beyond strictly regulatory policy into basically industrial policy with the Europe 2020’s Digital Agenda.

5.1 The EU Regulatory Framework for Electronic Communications. The 2002 Package.

Study Material
(a) europa.eu  http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/information_society/index_it.htm.
Current Framework (b) Competition
(b) Chieffi, Ilaria. 2006. L’integrazione amministrativa europea nelle comunicazioni elettroniche. Quaderni Cesifin. NS 29. Torino,Giappichelli [2006].
(available in the social sciences library) .
(c) Defraigne, Philippe and de Streel, Alexandre, What is the Digital Internal Market and where the European Union should intervene? EUI, RSCAS, Florence School of Regulation, EUI Working Papers, RSCAS 2011/33.
(downloadable from European University Institute website)

5.2 EU ICT-Telecoms Policy. The 2009 revision of the Euro Regulatory Framework for Electronic Communications.

Study Material.
(a) europa.eu.  general section on information society or information technology  specific section on the revision of the framework.
(b) Chieffi, Ilaria. La revisione del procedimento amministrativo europeo nelle comunicazioni elettroniche. Rivista italiana di diritto pubblico comunitario, Anno 2010, Vol. 20, pp. 901-943
(available in the social sciences library).



5.3 EU ICT-Telecoms Policy: From case to theory.

What can we learn from the ICT-Telecoms case about European Integration and Policy-Making in the European Union ? How did telecoms enter in the EU agenda when telecoms was exclusive competence of the member states? If competence could be passed to the EU, why did that happen in 1984 and not before ? Which internal factors and which external factors contribute to the change ? Why was the EU capable of liberalizing telecoms before the other two network industries - energy and transports? What was the role of our three basic variables – technology, markets, and regulation – in the three sectors ?
Study Material
Natalicchi, G., Wiring Europe, Rowman & Littlefield, 2001, Chapter 5 (the EC policy-making arena, 181-210), and, chapter 6 (from case to theory, 211-220).
(available in the social sciences library).

5.4. Europe 2020 and the Digital Agenda
In this final section (still dedicated to ICT-Telecoms) we will go beyond mainly regulatory policy, towards mainly industrial policy, as the EU, with the Europe 2020, through the Digital Agenda, tries to achieve the rather ambitious goal of becoming the most advanced knowledge-based economy in the world.
Study Material
(a) europa.eu  http://ec.europa.eu/information _society/digital-agenda/index_en.htm


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Performance Evaluation.
Grade Composition. Attendance = 10%. Mid-Term Exam = 30%. Final Exam = 60%.
Attendance. (10%) To obtain 10% of the total score you are expected to attend 90% of the classes.
Mid-Term Exam. (30%) Written exam (in class) with closed and open questions on the themes covered in the first 2 modules.
Final Exam. (60%9 An Oral Individual Test on the entire program.