The dissertation deals with the conflict over the EU Services Directive which is also known as the Bolkestein Directive. The general liberalisation and deregulation of the services markets in the EU has known the greatest politicisation of an EU issue ever seen in the history of European politics. It mobilised a wide range of political actors, including unions, diverse associations and citizen groups in several member states of the EU as well as in Brussels. The Commissioner for the internal market Frits Bolkestein and the directive proposal adopted in January 2004 have come to epitomize the neoliberal face of European integration. Due to its connection with the Eastern enlargement in May 2004 and with the ratification of the European constitutional treaty in France and The Netherlands in 2005, the directive proposal on services liberalization triggered a general debate over the economic and social nature of the EU polity far beyond a mere matter of public policy. After three years of debate and mobilization, the directive proposal was substantially amended in the European Parliament and clear limitations were put to liberalization of the services of general interest and to market deregulation.
The puzzle at the core of this conflict is that of political and social resistances to some aspects of EU integration, and more specifically, to integration my means of market liberalization. The “Bolkestein debate” constitutes a major moment of political crisis where, for the first time, protest and public mobilization could have a significant impact on the EU decision-making process. The design of this research is original in three respects. Firstly, it provides a new analytical perspective while refuting the relevance of theorization in terms of Euroscepticism. It puts forward the notion of resistances which acknowledges the intrinsically multi-faceted and contentious nature of the integration process and anchors hostility towards the EU into the wider historical context of resistance to the transformation of economic spaces and political systems. Thus, it aims at making research on the issues at stake much less normative. Secondly, it combines three strands of literature which are both relevant with respect to the study of resistances but nevertheless remain two compartmentalized research fields: namely social movement and contentious politics studies, literature about public policies and European studies. For so doing, thirdly, the dissertation is grounded on a comprehensive theoretical model which amends the famous model of the “three Is”: instead of explaining political processes in terms of interests, institutions and ideas, the concept of interests is substituted by that of interactions. Hence, the emphasis is put on the relationships between the various actors involved and the role of ideas conveyed in discursive interactions. This meso-level theoretical and empirical perspective allows to bridge the gap between, on the one hand, a sociological approach which is very present in the French-speaking political science and, on the other hand, the neo-institutional perspective throwing light on broader dynamics in the European political system and which prevails in the American and international realm.
Eventually, the dissertation demonstrates the powerful role of ideas conveyed by actors in specific institutional settings. At the institutional level, it confirms the existence of networks and mobilisation dynamics for the politicization of EU political issues beyond national borders, as well as the central role of the European Parliament with respect the impact of mobilisation on decision-making. At the ideational level, it reveals that the idea of Social Europe, on the one hand, and the shared culture of democracy and parliamentarism, on the other, can efficiently legitimize protest against integration.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BICfB/oai:ulb.ac.be:ETDULB:ULBetd-03012010-145956 |
| Date | 17 March 2010 |
| Creators | Crespy, Amandine |
| Contributors | Magnette, Paul, Costa, Olivier, Lacroix, Justine, De Waele, Jean-Michel, Schmidt, Vivien |
| Publisher | Universite Libre de Bruxelles |
| Source Sets | Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de la Communauté française de Belgique |
| Language | French |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://theses.ulb.ac.be/ETD-db/collection/available/ULBetd-03012010-145956/ |
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