The Choice for Differentiated Europe: Why European Union Member States Opt out of Integration

Winzen, Thomas and Schimmelfennig, Frank (2015) The Choice for Differentiated Europe: Why European Union Member States Opt out of Integration. [Conference Proceedings] (Submitted)

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Abstract

Since the early 1990s, European integration has become differentiated integration. Treaty revisions and enlargements have resulted in opt-outs for countries such as Britain or Denmark, and in policy areas such as monetary union. Analysing under what conditions member states make use of the opportunity to opt-out or exclude other countries from European integration, we argue that different explanations apply to treaty and accession negotiations respectively. Threatening to block deeper integration, member states with strong national identities secure differentiations in treaty reform, particularly regarding the integration of core state powers. In enlargement, in turn, old member states fear economic disadvantages and low administrative capacity and, therefore impose differentiation on poor newcomers. A logistic regression analysis of the use of differentiation opportunities by member and candidate countries from Maastricht in 1993 to the Croatian accession in 2013 lends empirical support to these arguments.

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