1st Edition

The Maastricht Treaty: Second Thoughts after 20 Years

Edited By Thomas Christiansen, Simon Duke Copyright 2013
    192 Pages
    by Routledge

    188 Pages
    by Routledge

    The Maastricht Treaty, signed in 1992 and ratified in the following year, is widely seen as a landmark in the evolution of the European Union. It introduced into the treaty framework revolutionary new elements such as the co-decision procedure between the Council and the European Parliament, cooperation in the area of Justice and Home Affairs, the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the "euro" as a single currency for the majority of the then member states. It also introduced the concept of European citizenship into the treaty, reflecting the rising expectations of both citizens and decision-makers in the European project, and upgraded the role of the European Council at the summit of the EU’s institutional structure.

    Twenty years later, each of these innovations remain of central importance for the process of European integration, while current developments provide a valuable opportunity to reflect on the historical decisions taken in Maastricht in order to assess their significance and examine the subsequent evolution of the Union.

    This volume brings together an international group of leading scholars in the field in order to provide such an assessment, with each article both looking back over the developments within each of these domains as well as looking ahead to the way in which the EU is positioned to address current challenges.

    This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.

    1. Introduction  Thomas Christiansen, Emil Kirchner and Simon Duke

    2. Unfinished Business: The Post-Maastricht Arc of Institutional Reform  Desmond Dinan (George Mason University)

    3. The European Council: History and performance of a key institution  Wolfgang Wessels (Cologne University)

    4. A Different Kind of Deficit: The Collapse of Euro-Legitimacy  Joseph Weiler (NYU Law School)

    5. ‘Maastricht Plus’ and the Supreme Emergency Exemption: Managing Inherent Imperfections  Kenneth Dyson (Cardiff University)

    6. The Maastricht Treaty at Twenty: A Greco-European Tragedy?  James Caporaso (University of Washington), Min-hyung Kim (Illinois Wesleyan University)

    7. Justice and home affairs: The Treaty of Maastricht as a decisive intergovernmental gate opener  Jörg Monar (University of Sussex)

    8. Still rooted in Maastricht: EU External Relations as a ‘Third-Generation Hybrid’  Michael Smith (Loughborough University)

    9. 20 years of co-decision since Maastricht: Inter- and intrainstitutional implications  Anne Rasmussen (Leiden University)

    10. The rise of civil society and participatory democracy: How does it fit with representative democracy?  Beate Kohler-Koch (Mannheim University)

    Biography

    Thomas Christiansen is Jean Monnet Professor of European Institutional Politics at Maastricht University. He is Co-Director of the Maastricht Centre for European Governance (with S.Vanhonacker) and Executive Editor of the Journal of European Integration (with S.Duke). He has published widely on different aspects of the institutional politics of the EU.

    Simon Duke is a Professor at the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA), Maastricht, Netherlands. He has published several monographs and his work has also appeared in numerous academic journals including the Journal of Common Market Studies, International Politics, European Foreign Affairs Review and the Hague Journal of Diplomacy.