Subsidiarity in the European Union, as the guiding principle of decision-making "close to the people", is often motivated and discussed from a predominantly political perspective. In this book, experts draw the demarcation between national and European policies from an economic viewpoint. Insights from economic theory and empirical research are used both to analyse the assignment of policies between the EU and its member states and to identify appropriate levels of decision-making.

In the course of its development the EU has had to deal with an expanding policy agenda, covering ever more subjects and an increased diversity of instruments. It has also had to deal with an increased number of member states and an extended range of partners (regional authorities, non governmental organisations). These developments have greatly increased the risk of inconsistencies between the various policies pursued and between the various levels of competence for the same policy. Inconsistent policies are less effective than they ought to be. So, they imply a welfare loss. The EU has tried to cope with the challenge of consistency by adapting its governance. Traditionally it uses mainly the regulatory method. The effectiveness of this method has recently come into question. So alternative methods are now favoured. One is the financial method; which implies more expenditure via the EU budget. The other is coordination. The application of both methods has certain advantages and disadvantages. The problem for policy makers is then to determine the choice between the modes first and the optimal level of budgetary and coordination efforts next. Notwithstanding its obvious policy relevance the problem has got little attention from academia. This book sets out to contribute to a solution by following two approaches. The first is a systematisation of the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of the financial and coordination methods. The second is an empirical investigation into a range of European policy processes, implying to different degrees budgetary outlays and coordination.

A tension between (richer) contributing Member States and (poorer) recipient Member States has always characterised the history of the budget of the European Union, the politics of which has often turned fraught. This volume evaluates the prospects for major change to expenditure and the structure of the budget for the period starting in 2014.

The importance of administration in the EU has been growing progressively together with the development of EU competences and tasks in the internal market. From the original model of a Community leaving enforcement with the Member States, the EU has become a complex legal order where administrative tasks are spread among different actors, including EU institutions, EU agencies and national administrations. Within this complex administrative law landscape, agencies and their powers have been essentially 'upgraded'. This volume asks whether any such 'upgrade' is compatible with EU law and its principles. Exploring both the case law of the CJEU and the regulation relating to EU agencies, the volume asks a crucial question about the legitimacy of the ever-increasing role of agencies in the enforcement of EU law.

No government can be sustained without the ability to tax its citizens. The question then arises how can a nation do so in a way that's fair and equitable to taxpayers while simultaneously promoting economic growth and providing the state with the funds it needs to adequately address the needs of its citizens? This insightful work, featuring contributions from a stellar array of international tax experts and economists, addresses the crucial, relevant issues which developed countries will confront in the early decades of the 21st century: The pursuit of tax reform. Personal tax base: income or consumption? Tax rate scale: equity and efficiency aspects. Business tax reform: structural and design issues. Interjurisdictional issues. Controlling tax avoidance.

To combat economic disparity and low growth, the European Union has established an integrated policy system that pursues increased cohesion and smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth. This integrated approach is realized through thousands of development projects and takes up more than a third of the total budget of the European Union. Despite its significance, the policy is subject to many misunderstandings and there is a lot of controversy surrounding its effectiveness. Cohesion and Growth seeks to bring clarity to these issues. It presents both the theoretical and practical aspects of EU intervention, a critical contribution to the understanding of the anatomy of the problems and the way to apply effective solutions to them, and a systematic view of the issues at each of the subsequent stages of the whole policy cycle. Offering an authoritative analysis of the problems and debates involved, this book is essential reading for students, policy makers, project promoters and researchers concerned with this key area of European policy making.

Professional services are a key component of the EU internal market economy yet also significantly challenge the legal framework governing this internal market. Indeed, specific professional regulatory structures, which are often the result of a blend of government and self-regulation, hold clear potential for conflict with EU free movement and competition law rules. Hence this book looks at the manner in which both free movement and competition laws might apply to such self- and co-regulatory set-ups, and at the leeway given to quality considerations (apparently) conflicting with free movement or competition objectives. In addition, since court action will seldom suffice to genuinely integrate a market, the book also explores those instruments of EU secondary legislation that are likely to impact the most on the provision of professional services. However, the book goes beyond a mere inventory to ask how EU Internal Market policy could contribute to the optimal legal environment for professional services. A law and economics analysis is employed to investigate the need for specific professional rules, the preferred type of regulator (self-, co- or government regulation), and the level - national and/or European - at which regulation should be adopted. As becomes clear, the story of the market for professional services is one of market and government failure; the author is thus left to compare imperfect situations where market failures compete with rent-seeking efforts, the tendency towards over-centralisation and national protectionism. This book offers both an in-depth legal analysis of the EU framework as it applies to professional services as well as a more normative evaluation of this framework based on insights from law and economics scholarship. It will therefore be a valuable resource for all practitioners, policy-makers and academics dealing with professional services, as well as, more generally, with questions of quality and self-regulation.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is a unique agricultural policy worldwide. For many years, its status as the only common European Community (EC) policy governed by EC institutions put it at the heart of European integration. Today the CAP is not the only common European Union (EU) policy. Even while it remains the sole instance of a regionally integrated agricultural policy, the CAP no longer embodies the same degree of cross-national harmonization of agricultural policy among EC/EU member states that it once did. The CAP has undergone policy reforms in the past two decades and these reforms have spawned a host of questions. What has caused the CAP to reform? How path-breaking are CAP reforms? Are they consistent with founding CAP goals or do they encompass new ideas about agriculture’s place in the economy and society? And what are the consequences of agricultural policy reforms: for European farmers, consumers and taxpayers; for European ‘public goods’ such as environmental sustainability and preservation of rural communities and landscapes; and for third parties outside the EU, including the WTO? This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.

Romania hosts the 2012 Bologna / European Higher Education Area Ministerial Conference and the Third Bologna Policy Forum. In preparation for these meetings, The Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) organised the Future of Higher Education - Bologna Process Researchers’ Conference (FOHE-BPRC) in Bucharest on 17-19 October 2011, with the support of the European University Association (EUA) and the Romanian National Committee for UNESCO. The conference brought the voices of researchers into international-level policy making in higher education. The results of the conference are presented in this book. Until now, empirical evidence supporting policies and reforms in higher education has often been a matter of local or regional focus. The development of a pan-European process in higher education policy drives a need to explore wider research topics on which to base policies. This book offers an unprecedented opportunity for higher education researchers to interact and contribute to the political process shaping the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), and to national policy agendas in more than 100 participant countries for the 2012 ministerial events. The book collects more than 50 articles focusing on vital issues in European higher education. These are arranged in sections addressing the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) Principles; Teaching and Learning; Quality Assurance; Mobility; Higher Education Governance in the EHEA; Funding of Higher Education; Diversification of Higher Education Missions; Higher Education Futures and Foresight.

The policies of the European Union profoundly affect the lives of people in Europe and around the world. The new edition of this highly successful textbook outlines how and why such decisions are made, as well as the key challenges faced by policy-makers in the current political and economic climate. Policy-Making in the European Union begins by clarifying the institutional framework of the EU and the analytical approaches used to understand it. A wide range of crucial and illustrative policies are then explored in detail by subject experts. This volume includes new chapters on ways of analyzing the EU's policy process and on energy policy. A central theme to the volume is how the recent expansion to twenty-seven member states has affected policy-making across the different policy sectors. The conclusion reflects on how this challenge and the protracted constitutional stalemate have affected policy-making in the EU. It also explores the impact of the financial and economic crises that have struck Europe over the past several years. The sixth edition is fully up-to-date, and is the ideal text for all those with an interest in the policy-making of the European Union.