The centrality of consensus and Deliberation in Contemporary EU Politics and the new intergovernmentalism

Abstract

This article builds on the analysis of institutional change in the European Union as projected by two closely related approaches: deliberative and new intergovernmentalism. Consensus and deliberation play a pivotal role within these perspectives. The two concepts are seen as key for understanding institutional change within the European Council and Council environment. Euro crisis decision-making, which by several authors is seen as evidence of either hard intergovernmental bargaining or as a transformation of consensus politics into domination, thus may undermine a core assumption of the new intergovernmentalism. Even though persisting asymmetries between creditor and debtor countries and dominance on part of one or a small number of powerful member states are understood as a threat to consensus politics, the euro crisis is not seen to have fundamentally changed the overall role of consensus and deliberation as a defining feature of the post-Maastricht era.

Keywords:

• Intergovernmentalism
• deliberation
• euro crisis
• consensus
• European Council
• Council

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful for the comments provided by two anonymous referees.

Notes

1. Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the EMU of January 2013, http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/european-council/pdf/Treaty-on-Stability-Coordination-and-Governance-TSCG/ (accessed on 1 March 2016).

2. The aim of this article is not to provide a comprehensive account of euro crisis management and the role of deliberation within it as this has be done by the author elsewhere, cf. Puetter (2014).

3. Cf. Regulation (EU) No. 1176/2011, 16 November 2011.

4. As reported by Reuters on 24 May 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/eurozone-greece-varoufakis-idUSL5N0YF0CG20150524 (accessed on 1 March 2016).

5. As quoted in ‘Eurozone officials seek to bypass Varoufakis to spur Greek talks’, Financial Times, 26 April 2015, online edition.

6. As quoted in ‘Tsipras reshuffles negotiation team to sideline Varoufakis’, Financial Times, 27 April 2015, online edition.

7. Website of the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the European Union, http://www.eu2015lu.eu/en/actualites/articles-actualite/2015/09/22-conseil-jai-extra/ (accessed on 1 March 2016)).

8. Donald Tusk, interview with The Guardian, 3 December 2015.

9. All emphasis as in the original text.