La Europa que nos elude: la Unión Europea como ente político complejo

Abstract

In the past the European Union was perceived as a functional and ideal polity despite media coverage pointing to the contrary and academic literature featuring its complexities. This article agrees with the assessment that the EU is not quite the ideal polity of yore and its functionality is the product of intense interstate bargains and policy coordination between member states. The absence of these would comprise a critical juncture, which would usually mean stagnation in the process of integration. These junctures were especially poignant between 1997 and 2005 but were also frequent in the period leading up to the institutional overhaul made possible by the Treaty of Lisbon (2009). Because it is of recent implementation, assessments of institutional refit are mere speculations at this point; the passage of time being the only recourse for procurement of data necessary to provide adequate assessment of the new EU regime. This does not exempt the polity from experimenting cyclical periods of crisis nor does it invalidate past recommendations for approaching the study of politics and policy in the EU. That is, taking into account the constant interaction of the ontical and ontological when studying such a complex polity, a student of the European Union needs to consider various criteria. First, the institutional dynamics of this unique type of regime and the assumption of the EU as a multilevel entity and the integration process as running in multiple velocities (Europe à deux vitesses). And second, as such, for the European Union to be understood it needs to be studied from various theoretical approaches.