Defence Industrial Cooperation in the European Union by Daniel Fiott

Author:Daniel Fiott [Fiott, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367109929
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

Concluding observations

What does the analysis above tell one about the explanatory approaches detailed in Chapter 2? What is again clear is that structural pressures such as the 2008 economic crisis played an important role in providing a rationale for directive 2009/43/EC. On this basis, it could be argued that the liberalising ideology that appeared to accompany the directive points to the strength of ideational explanations (see Britz 2010). However, despite the language of liberalisation one can observe that the member states still managed to retain national authority over export licensing. Politics related to national control authorisation and the role of the Commission in export policy played as significant a role as economics during the negotiations for the directive, and in reality the transfers directive has so far only marginally liberalised Europe’s defence markets. In other respects, the economic crisis of 2008 could be the type of structural pressure foreseen by reactive spillover to lead to greater supranationalism in EU defence industrial cooperation. Taken at face value, the ‘defence package’ did perhaps grant more supranational oversight of intra-EU transfers but again EU member states maintained significant control over national export authorisations despite the adoption of the directive (Europe Economics 2009: 92; BAE Systems 2014: 2; Masson et al. 2015: 54 and 58).26

In this chapter, therefore, structural pressures cannot be used in isolation as a sole explanation for closer EU defence industrial cooperation. Neither can one easily say that the European Commission played the definitive role in pushing for the transfers directive. Judicial politics’ assumption that the adoption of the directive was a direct result of the Commission’s ability to threaten the member states with ECJ-driven integration while also offering member states a legal ‘middle ground’ to provide for legal certainty for intra-EU defence transfers can be challenged (Blauberger and Weiss 2013). While there is certainly some theoretical merit to the idea that the transfers directive offered member states legal certainty, there is little evidence to suggest that EU case law was ultimately responsible for driving the member states towards a compromise. Judicial politics ascribes too much importance to Cases 414/97 and 337/05, and it neglects important historical phenomena such as the 2008 French Presidency of the Council of the EU, the economic crisis of that same year and the fact that larger member states actually sided with DG ENTR on most aspects of the transfers directive.

In this respect, the example of the transfers directive has challenged the idea that the Commission drives forward EU cooperation. First, at no point during the legislative process did any amendment by the Council or the Parliament seek to endow the Commission with a mandate to exercise control over the export policies of member states.27 While the Commission had a clear understanding of what it wanted to achieve with the transfers directive, it necessarily had to remain flexible as amendments to the proposed legislation emerged from both the Council and the Parliament. In fact, there is general agreement among governments and industry that the compromise achieved

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.