This edited volume contributes to the literature that analyzes the likely trajectory and foreseeable future of the European Union (EU) after the many crises – euro, migration, Brexit and, lately, Covid – that characterized the first two decades of the 21st century. It departs from the notion of ‘differentiated integration’ to explore whether what could best characterize the configuration and likely development of the EU should be rather described as simply ‘differentiation’ or even ‘segmentation’. The first task, then, is to explain the difference between these terms and their value added.
‘Differentiated integration’ still contains the expectation that – although with temporary exemptions, specific opt-outs and -ins, and special provisions for the more hesitant member states – all will eventually reach the same level of integration. ‘Differentiation’ does not bear this promise and admits the possibility that membership in the EU might be permanently differentiated. ‘Segmentation’ – the genuine conceptual innovation of this volume – points to the institutional configuration of such a permanently differentiated Union and to the values and ideas that might be nested in particular policy areas and institutional configurations. For Josef Bátora and John-Erik Fossum, editors of this volume and prolific writers on this topic, segmentation is clearly a negative term: it indicates not only that different policy areas may be regulated by different rules and procedures, but also that the EU lacks an institutional core that can give all European citizens the opportunity to register their interests and ideas in the expectation that they be thoroughly discussed and eventually determine the way in which the EU operates across many policy areas. A segmented political order, instead, is one in which some interests and ideas are structurally locked in given policy areas foreclosing the possibility to explore different political orientations and policy solutions.
According to the editors (Chapter 1), this is the result of the incremental choices made under the pressure of a series of crises that, by preempting the full consideration of all the affected parties’ interests and ideas, gave the opportunity to some institutional actors and some governments to impose their views and values in specific policy areas – most notably monetary and fiscal policy and migration and foreign policy. These ‘cognitive and policy-based closures’ defied the plausible expectation that increased differentiation might lead to more open and inclusive discussions on how to counter the crises, and rather constrained debate and deliberation.
This unwelcome development is attributed by editors to a crises-induced shift from the ‘Community method’ to the ‘Union method’, hence to the greater role plaid by national executives and their tendency to resort to ‘expert advice’, circumvention of conventional procedures and creation of ‘interstitial institutions’. In the words of Bátora, ‘The inherent danger of segmentation – or its illusion and lure – is that [it] fosters collective action capabilities by generating bias and narrowing down policy options while at the same time limiting possibilities of institutional innovation and exploration’ (p. 168). What is missing in this segmental political order is precisely the opportunity to open up the exploration of all ideas and solutions.
Such closure appears under several guises, discussed in detail by Fossum (Chapter 2): (1) ideas and ideologies; (2) policy instruments and styles; (3) institutions and procedures; (4) constraints and limits; (5) patterns of dependence and vulnerability; (6) weakly de-segmenting institutional arrangements. In exploring the dynamics that induce segmentation, Fossum particularly insists on the ‘competency trap’ into which experts often fall and identifies in the crises-enhanced intergovernmentalism the driver of such heightened recourse to expert advice – a logical passage that should perhaps be more clearly explained.
The chapters that follow trace these traits and mechanisms in several policy areas and with reference to several crises. Tranøy and Schwarz (Chapter 3) analyze the way in which ideas that did not conform to a rule-based (ordoliberal) vision of the economy and solutions that ran counter the principles of frugality and competitiveness were de facto shunned during the euro crisis, while Gould and Malová (Chapter 6) reveal how these same ideas were used by successive Slovakian governments to pose as a poster child of liberalism and to eschew sharing any solidarity burden. Solidarity is an idea and value that was progressively redefined and ultimately discarded during the euro and refugee crises. Olsen (Chapter 5) and Michailidou and Trenz (Chapter 7) convincingly analyze how the notion of solidarity entrenched in EU treaties and in international charters was incrementally redefined and made dependent upon political conveniences, power strategies and notions of deservingness, thus allowing the contamination of its humanitarian origins with security considerations. In these chapters, the segmental logic appears in its crudest form, as segmenting not only ideas, instruments and procedures but flesh-and-blood people and enforcing arguably unnecessary suffering on entire populations.
The segmental securitization ideology that colors migration policy appears with even greater force in the political orientations of European citizens toward foreign policy. Onderco (Chapter 11) analyzes how foreign policy ideas changed particularly among those affected by the negative consequences of the euro and migration crises and how they redirected their sympathies away from the EU and the US and toward Russia. Riedel (Chapter 9) documents how exclusionary notions of national identity colored the reorientation of successive Polish governments away from liberalism and inspired institutional reforms that undermined the Polish liberal constitution. This reorientation in values and sympathies find their echo and support in newspaper coverage of the crises in the Check Republic, Slovakia and Hungary that Steuer illustrates with ample data (Chapter 10). More general considerations about the transformation of European governance are signaled by Holst and Molander (Chapter 4) who also detail the limitations of a blind recourse to economic expertise and the traps into which economic experts tend to fall when they are entrusted with excessive power. Finally, a chapter that explains and illustrates the difference between differentiation and segmentation but also draws attention to the non-conventional ways in which even a riotous member of the EU like the UK often contributed to integration-sustaining differentiation while ultimately triggering a segmentation-inducing dynamic is that by Lord (Chapter 12). The editors recap all of the above (Chapter 13) and sketch possible future scenarios for the Union in the years to come.
The volume adds an intriguing new concept – segmentation – to the analysis of the evolution of the EU and derives interesting but worrying insights from its deployment, particularly in the fields of monetary and fiscal policy and of migration and foreign policy. Its multifarious use, however, makes segmentation into a sort of umbrella concept that aims to cover too many different phenomena without sufficiently testing under what conditions they can be expected to appear. By mixing principles drawn from different policy areas (e.g., humanitarian solidarity and border security in migration policy), the ‘interstitial institutions’ that are created in times of crisis are charged with contaminating principles belonging to different policy areas, but it remains unclear why this should necessarily happen at the expense of the more inclusionary principles. Ultimately, we are left wondering whether national governments simply resorted to nationally entrenched ideas and restrictive procedures in a gasping attempt to manage difficult crises or deviously took advantage of these crises to gain durable cognitive and procedural advantages in sensitive policy areas.
