Opting Out of an Ever Closer Union: The Integration Doxa and the Management of Sovereignty

Abstract

How is sovereignty managed in the EU? This article investigates the relationship between sovereignty and European integration through the prism of national opt-outs from EU treaties, addressing an apparent contradiction in contemporary European governance: the contrasting processes of integration and differentiation. On the one hand, European integration is increasing as states transfer sovereign competencies to the EU. On the other hand, we see a multitude of differentiation processes through which member states choose to disengage from the EU polity by negotiating exemptions or derogations. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's political sociology, the article argues that to understand how sovereignty is interpreted and exercised in the EU, it is necessary to focus not only on the constitutive and regulative dimensions of sovereignty, but equally on the practice dimension. This entails an exploration of how sovereignty claims are managed in a particular social setting. Rather than seeing opt-outs as classic instruments of international law, accentuating the member states' unchanged sovereignty, the article argues that the management of the British and Danish opt-outs quite paradoxically expresses the strength of the doxa of European integration, i.e. the notion of ‘an ever closer union’.

Acknowledgements

A draft version of this article was presented at the workshop ‘Sovereignty and European Integration in the “post constitutional” Era’ organised by Cormac MacAmleigh at the University of Edinburgh on 29 May 2009. I wish to thank all the participants at the workshop and in particular Cormac Mac Amhlaigh, Christopher Bickerton, Andrew Glencross, Claudio Michelon, and William Phelan for their very valuable comments. Moreover, I wish to thank Bart Van Vooren, my colleagues at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies.

Notes

1. The case studies used in this article draw on Adler-Nissen (2008).

2. To lawyers who maintain a vision of the EU as a traditional international organisation, a treaty opt-out proves that the EU is a classic treaty-based international organisation where states remain ‘Herren der Verträge’ (see Allain 1999: 269).

3. The ‘Protocol on certain provisions relating to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’, annexed to the Maastricht Treaty, lists the details of the British opt-out.

4. In 1997, the United Kingdom decided to participate in the Social Chapter and the provisions of the protocol were inserted into the Treaty of Amsterdam.

5. Germany's ‘banana protocol’, attached to the Rome Treaty (1957), is also controversial (see Alter and Meunier 2006).

6. Interview, European Commission DG JLS (Brussels), January 2007.

7. Interview, UK Permanent Representation (Brussels), May 2006.

8. Interview, Cabinet Office (London), April 2007.

9. Financial statement, House of Commons debates, 22 June 2010.

10. Interviews, UK Treasury, April 2007.

11. Interview, Danish Ministry of Finance, August 2007.

12. Interview, Home Office (London), August 2006.

13. Interview, UK Cabinet Office, April 2007.

14. EU summit, House of Commons debates, 8 November 2004.

15. Danish People's Party's European Parliament campaign 2009.

16. Interviews, Home Office (London), April 2007; Ministry of Refugees, Immigrants and Integration Affairs (Copenhagen), August 2006.

17. European Affairs Committee, Danish Parliament, 9 February 2007.

18. European Affairs Committee, Danish Parliament, annex 551, 31 January 2003.

19. Interviews, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Copenhagen), February 2006.