"The European Commission: Enlargement as Reinvention?"

Peterson, John, and Birdsall, Andrea. (2007) "The European Commission: Enlargement as Reinvention?". In: UNSPECIFIED, Montreal, Canada. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Will future historians view the 2004-7 enlargements as a heroic step towards the unification of Europe, or the point at which the European Union’s (EU) glory days came to an end? Much will depend on how the European Commission, a uniquely ‘politicized bureaucracy’ under constant pressure both to enforce common rules and to deviate from them, copes with enlargement. This paper reviews early evidence of enlargement’s impact on the Commission. Its central argument is that enlargement has not fundamentally altered the role of the Commission, but it has reinforced the impact of several other changes that are ‘secular’ ones not exclusively or even specifically linked to enlargement. They include: the emergence of a younger and more flexible Commission, one that is more ‘Presidential’, and one which can no longer rely as much on its traditional monopoly power to propose formal legislation to influence EU policy debates. Enlargement is one, but only one, amongst multiple rationale being used by reformers to ‘reinvent’ the Commission.

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