The existence of a European public sphere, a public network of exchange of opinions and ideas on political issues, has come to be seen as a prerequisite for the democratic legitimacy of the European Union. The paper conceptualizes the Europeanization of the national public spheres as a gradual...

This paper deals with the ways in which the interconnectedness of multiple political levels in increaingly internationalized structures of governance impacts on these levels' democratic legitimation. Focusing on the European Union (EU), it argues that in the EU's multi-level system, the...

We show that tax competition in the EU is shaped by four interrelated institutional mechanisms: 1) Market integration, by reducing the transaction costs of cross-border tax arbitrage in the Single Market, 2) enlargement, by increasing the number and heterogeneity of states involved in intra-EU...

What is the nature of the European Union? Does it have the characteristics of a state, and if so, which? We employ a single imagea poster that won a Marshall Plan competition in 1950to examine the various legal perspectives of the EU that have emerged over the past six decades. Created as a...

As a result of international legalization, the potential for conflicts of overlapping jurisdictions has multiplied vertically between national and international law, as well as horizontally between national and foreign law. In competition control, the latter type of horizontal overlap between US...

This article seeks to explain why EC Members in 1990 delegated competences in the coordination of TACIS - a technical assistance programme with energy related aspects for the former Soviet Union - to the Commission, and to determine whether this institution succeeded in exerting an independent...

Europaweit konnte in den vergangenen Jahren ein Trend zur Liberalisierung von Infrastrukturmärkten beobachtet werden, damit einhergehend der Wandel staatlicher Aufgaben in den betroffenen Sektoren: Statt selber Infrastrukturleistungen durch staatliche Monopolunternehmen anzubieten, beschränkt...

The involvement of civil society in EU governance is widely interpreted as a right step in the direction of participatory democracy. Civil society associations are expected to communicate the concerns of citizens to Brussels, to engage in public deliberation with EU decision makers and...

It is often claimed that the participation of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) can mitigate the democratic deficit of the European Union. This claim rests on the assumption that civil society organizations channel citizens' concerns to the European institutions, a view which is also shared by...