040229 SE Policy in the EU (2017S)

In the process of European integration, member states have largely centralized competition policy at the European level and thereby moved the provision of public services to a significant extent from the public sector to the market. Through the application of the “four market freedoms”, and “mutual recognition” of foreign regulatory standards, they also opened up domestic markets in goods and services for foreign competition, sometimes governed by foreign regulation. At the same time, however, liberalization seems to have unleashed an unprecedented level of regulatory activity at the EU level, and member-states often successfully “export” their domestic regulations to the EU level.
This seminar uses European integration theory to explain these and other seeming contradictions in regulatory EU policy. It provides and introduction to EU policy using instances of market constituting (liberal) and market-correcting (interventionist) policies as examples. It explores the tensions between these policies, their dynamics and potential for conflict; and it examines how and to what extent market constitution and market correction are embedded in the EU’s institutional architecture.