Navigating politicization dynamics: Czechia and Slovakia’s role in advancing functional integration through rebalancing EU’s four freedoms

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the divergence in voting behaviour among Visegrad 4 (V4) countries regarding the revision of the Posted Workers Directive (PWD), focusing on the surprising support from Czechia and Slovakia despite initial dissent. Drawing on the ‘garbage can’ model of decision-making rooted in organization theory, this contribution unwraps overlooked processes accompanying politicization, particularly the interplay between defining the problems, finding the solutions to these problems and interests represented by actors involved. Supplementing an organizational theory perspective with governmental reports, EU documents, interviews, and media news, it reveals how narratives used in the politicization of the PWD influenced discussions on dual food standards (DFS). The article concludes that politicization could be used as a strategic tool to garner support for recalibrating imbalances in other areas of the Single Market, and contrary to prevailing assumptions, it does not impede, but could further functional integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Politicization
• posted workers
• social convergence
• four freedoms
• single market

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers for dedicating their time and effort to reviewing the manuscript. Special appreciation goes to Matúš Mišík for his valuable comments and suggestions, as well as to Monika Brusenbauch Meislová for her constructive feedback on previous drafts, which considerably improved the quality of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The only exception here is Denmark.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract No. [APVV-21-0237].