The End of Creeping Competence? EU Policy‐Making Since Maastricht

TLDR

Since the Treaty of Rome, the EU has broadened its scope to include extensive budgetary and regulatory powers, but the 1990s backlash against Brussels’ centralization threatened a retrenchment of policy‑making. The article analyzes late‑1990s and early‑2000s budgetary and regulatory data to assess whether EU policy‑making centralization has slowed or reversed after Maastricht. The analysis finds limited retrenchment in EU budgetary spending due to EMU fiscal constraints, German opposition, and enlargement demands, while regulation continues to be extensive and active.

Abstract

From its origins in the Treaty of Rome to the Maastricht Treaty on European Union, the EU has expanded the range of its activities dramatically, adopting both budgetary and regulatory policies across a broad range of issue‐areas. The 1990s, however, witnessed a political and economic backlash against the creeping centralization of policy‐making in Brussels, threatening a major retrenchment, or even devolution, of EU policy‐making. This article examines budgetary and regulatory data from the late 1990s and early 2000s, to determine whether the centralization of policy‐making has slowed, or even reversed, during the post‐Maastricht era. The data reveal selective evidence of retrenchment in EU budgetary expenditures, which have been limited by the fiscal restrictions of EMU, German resistance to any increase in its net contribution, and the new budgetary demands of enlargement. By contrast, data on EU regulation suggest that the EU has been, and remains, an active regulator across a wide range of issue‐areas after Maastricht, and will continue to play the role of a regulatory state in the future.