Revisiting Creeping Competences in the EU: The Case of Security R&D Policy

Abstract

The literature on European integration has documented several cases of creeping competences in the EU. None of these studies, however, has fully clarified the conditions under which this phenomenon takes place, nor provided any testable hypotheses on its empirical dynamics. This paper studies one case where secondary legislation was employed to extend a formal treaty-based competence (civilian research and technology policy) to an area that, for historical and strategic reasons, has always been a policy monopoly of national governments: research and technology development policy for security and defence. Through the analysis of a large pool of documentary data, I elaborate a set of linked hypotheses about the empirical dynamics of creeping competences, and show how the theory of incomplete contracting is best suited to explain this phenomenon.

Key Words:

• EU policy-making
• creeping competences
• research policy
• security policy

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Susana Borrás, Andrew James, the members of CBS-based WIP seminar and two anonymous referees for providing helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1. Decision 1982/2006/EC of 18 December 2006.

2. Sum of expenditure in defence-related R&D of all the EU member states (with the exception of Denmark) in 2010. Source: European Defence Agency, ‘2010 Defence Data’.

3. Extract from the Joint Declaration issued at the British–French Summit, St Malo, France, 3–4 December 1998.

4. The 2010 Headline goal was approved by the General Affairs and External Relations Council on 17 May 2004, and endorsed by the European Council of 17 and 18 June 2004.

5. The members of GoP were: two Commissioners (Busquin and Liikanen); Chris Patten and Pascal Lamy as observers; Javier Solana as high representative for CFSP; eight defence sector corporations (EADS, BAE systems, Thales, Finmeccanica, Ericsson Microwave, Indra, Siemens and Diehl) and seven research institutions; four members of the Parliament, one rapporteur and four observers from NATO, WEAO, OCCAR, and ESA.

6. Case C-414/97, Commission v Spain, at [21].

7. Case C-273/97, Sirdar, at [27]–[28] and Case C-285/98, Kreil, at [24]–[25].

8. Case T-26/01, Fiocchi munizioni SpA v Commission, at [60]–[64].