Let’s not argue over EU policies: the case of wine reform

Abstract

Since the politicization of the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’ began in the early 1990s, research has paid considerable attention to formal mechanisms for European-scale deliberation (e.g. the European Parliament or the European Convention). However, has this social science been looking for EU deliberation in the right place? Given that most of the EU’s government takes place within sectors, this article instead applies Risse’s lens on deliberation to investigating one of these venues of politics. Using findings from a process-tracing of the radical reform of the EU’s regulation of its wine industry in 2008, it claims that despite a recent shift within the Commission to present its arguments more ‘transparently’, deliberation remained stifled by anticipations of interest group and member state resistance. More generally, the case study is used to show that although Commission consultation procedures are now consistently structured by the procedures of ‘Better Regulation’, these are still driven by calculations of consequences for Council negotiations rather than by a principled commitment to open argument and change through persuasion.

Keywords:

• constructivism
• deliberation
• European Commission
• problematization
• legitimation
• wine

Notes

1. 1. The Better Regulation Initiative was a response to the European Council’s Lisbon agreement in 2000 and then the report of the Mandelkern Group on Better Regulation (published on 13 November 2001). The Commission’s response to this was published a year later. ‘Towards a reinforced culture of consultation and dialogue – general principles and minimum standards for consultation of interested parties by the Commission’, COM(2002) 704 final, 11 December 2002.

2. 2. These findings stem from ongoing research carried out within the GEDI project (Le gouvernement européen des industries) financed by the French Agence nationale de la recherche for the period 2009–12. This research has been carried out with Antoine Roger and Xabier Itçaina whom we thank whilst accepting sole responsibility for the present text.

3. 3. Vin: Organisation commune du marché and Vin: économie du secteur.

4. 4. Together with no less than 43 representatives of ‘European institutions’, mostly from the Commission. Source: preparatory documents posted on the internet.

5. 5. Vers un secteur vitivinicole européen durable, COM (2006) 319 final, 22 June 2006.

6. 6. Most notably reducing the number of hectares of vines to be grubbed out from 400,000 to 200,000.

7. 7. ‘Proposition de règlement du Conseil portant organisation commune du marché vitivinicole’, COM(2007)372, 4 July 2007.

8. 8. ‘I am not saying that on certain points we did not take some of their remarks into account. It was a political game so we played the game, but this was of marginal importance. It was important not to put the European Parliament’s back up’ (Interview, DG AGRI, December 2009).

9. 9. E. Montaigne and A-M. Coelho, ‘The reform of the Common Market Organization for Wine’, report to the European Parliament, August 2006.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andy Smith

Andy Smith is a research professor at the Centre Emile Durkheim at the University of Bordeaux. He is a specialist of European public policymaking and political economy, and his recent research has focused on how industries in general, and those of wine and pharmaceuticals, are governed at the level of the EU. In his research, he has also sought to develop a framework for analysis that combines elements from constructivist and institutionalist political science, economics and sociology. See for example his co-edited (with B. Jullien) book Industries and Globalization (2008) and article in Review of International Political Economy (2011).