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Other Achievements/Activities
April 2004 Observer in European Commission, Office for the High Representative (OHR), OSCE, United Nations High Commissariat for Refugees (UNCHR), Sarajevo and Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Jan. 2004 Observer in Czech Foreign Ministry and diverse Austrian Financial Institutions, Prague, Czech Republic
July 2003 Working Group Secretary, External Relations WG, Second Session of the Convention for European Students, Universitá Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy
March 2003 Observer in European Parliament, Council of Europe and European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France, Observer in European Courts of Justice, European Court of Auditors and European Investment Bank, Luxemburg, Luxemburg
Feb. 2003 Observer in European Commission, European
Parliament and NATO, Brussels and Mons, Belgium Jan. 2003 Rapporteur and Working Group Chairman, External
Action, Trade and Development WG, Sciences-Po Paris, Paris, France
Oct. 2001–July 2002 Founder and elected President of the London School of Economics Spanish Society, London, United Kingdom
Other Information
Languages Spanish (mother tongue), French, English and
German (fluent), Italian (fair)
Research Interests
Dissertation Outline
Title: The impact of EU legislation to combat discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in three Member States
Context
The thematic framework for the present Dissertation is EU anti-discrimination policy. Initially, the fight against discrimination in the EU concentrated upon the grounds of gender (Articles
I H S — Juan Casado-Asensio / Scholar — 67
137(1) and 141 TEC) and nationality (Article 12 TEC). With the inclusion of Article 13 into the body of the Treaty of Amsterdam, the right of non-discrimination was extended to other areas: age, disability, religion or belief and sexual orientation. So far, two Directives have been passed under Article 13 to combat discrimination: Directive 2000/43/EC1 (Race Directive) and Directive 2000/78/EC2 (Employment Equality Directive), establishing a General Framework for Equal Treatment in Employment and Occupation for the aforementioned grounds. The Directive was not transposed into the national law by the end of 2003 in all member states, as laid down in the Directive.
Research Question
The implementation process of the Employment Equality Directive with respect to the area of sexual orientation will be analysed. Member states portrayed appreciably different implementation performances. Hence the research question of is: How to account for the differential pattern of implementation displayed by EU Member States?
To answer this research question, the focus will be on three EU member states: Austria, Germany and Spain. These countries are comparable because their “gender regimes”
(Ostner and Lewis 1995) concerning the controversial area of sexual orientation were relatively similar before the Directive was introduced. They are interesting cases because they provide a critical level of variance in terms of implementation performance. Finally, having only a few case studies permits a qualitatively deeper understanding of the area under research. An important side question arises, namely: Which factors delayed, blocked or accelerated compliance in these member states?
Theoretical Framework and Hypothesis
This Dissertation adds to the literature on the domestic impact of EU law, which is one of the features of the larger concept of “Europeanisation”. Europeanisation, as understood here, refers to the domestic reactions to top-down influences stemming from European policy-making (Ladrech 1994, Radaelli 2000).3 It provides the first step of the “chain of interactive casual mechanisms” (Liebert 2003) that drives Europeanisation, because without domestic compliance any further Europeanisation effects are inevitably impeded. The hypothesis guiding this research provide plausible answers to why differential performances are observed. The first hypothesis refers to the “misfit hypothesis” (Duina and Blithe 1999): H1:
high levels of misfit explain implementation failure.
1 OJ L 180, 19.07.2000, 22 2 OJ L 303, 2.12.2000, 16
3 For alternative definitions see Risse et al. (2001); Kohler-Koch (2000) or Börzel (1999) and Falkner (2000).
Other important hypotheses found in the implementation literature refer to the number of veto players (Tsebelis 1995): H2: large numbers of veto players explain implementation failure and the “worlds of compliance” (Falkner et al. 2005): H3: specific process patterns and institutional features produce different outcomes in different worlds of compliance.
Methods
The literature on social policy, anti-discrimination, Europeanisation and implementation will be reviewed in the theoretical part of this project. To understand the origin and negotiation of the Directive, relevant official European and national documents will be consulted. The empirical part of the paper relies mainly upon qualitative expert interviews -semi-structured questionnaires with experts from the ministries of Social Affairs, trade unions, employers’
associations, and relevant interest groups (e.g. Hosi in Austria) at the national level.
Bibliography
Börzel, Tanja (1999). ‘Towards Convergence in Europe? Institutional Adaptation to Europeanisation in Germany and Spain’, Journal of Common Market Studies 37 (4): 573-96.
Duina, Francesco G., and Blithe, Frank 1999. 'Nation-States and Common Markets: The Institutional Conditions for Acceptance', Review of International Political Economy 6(4): 494-530.
Falkner, Gerda (2000). ‘How pervasive are Euro-Politics? Effects of EU Membership on a New Member State’, Journal of Common Market Studies 38(2): 223-50.
Falkner, Gerda; Treib, Oliver; Hartlapp, Miriam; Leiber, Simone (2005). Complying with Europe: EU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kohler-Koch, Beate (2000). ‘Europäisierung: Plädoyer für eine Horizonterweiterung’, in Michèle Knodt and Beate Kohler-Koch (eds.), Deutschland zwischen Europäisierung und Selbstbehauptung. Mannhimer Jahrbuch für Europäische Sozialforschung Vol. V.
Frankfurt/M./New York: Campus, 11-31.
Ladrech, Robert (1994). “Europeanisation of Domestic Politics and Institutions: The Case of France”, Journal of Common Market Studies 32(1): 69-88.
Liebert, Ulrike (2003). ‘Between Diversity and Equality: Analysing Europeanisation’, in Ulrike Liebert and Stefanie Sifft (eds.), Gendering Europeanisation, Series Multiple Europes No. 19.
Brussels: Peter Lang.
Ostner, Ilona, and Lewis, Jane 1995. 'Gender and European Social Policy', in: Stephan Leibfried, and Paul Pierson (eds.), European Social Policy: between fragmentation and integration. 159-193. Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution.
Radaelli, Claudio (2000). ‘Whither Europeanization? Concept Stretching and Substantive Change’, European Integration Online Papers 4(8) <http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2000-008a.htm>
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Risse, Thomas; Cowles, Maria Green and Caporaso, James (2001). ‘Europeanization and Domestic Change: Introduction’, in: Maria Green Cowles, James Caporaso and Thomas Risse (eds.), Transforming Europe: Europeanization and Domestic Change. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1-20.
Tsebelis, George (1995). ‘Decision Making in Political Systems: Veto Players in Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, Multicameralism and Multipartism’, British Journal of Political Science 25: 289-325.
Previous Research
“Redesigning the Political System and Welfare State in Hungary and Poland”
Abstract
The fall of Communism after 1989 unravelled a regional “wave of democratisation” and of freeing of markets in Eastern and Central Europe. The sudden end of the Cold War took the international community by surprise, not least in Europe where these events also coincided with a period of intense “deepening”, as well as “widening”. The ongoing process of
“deepening” ultimately touched on social policy in the 1990s and in the 2000 EU Lisbon Summit a new European approach to social policy was defined. Nevertheless, the European Union also “widened” and since the fall of Communism it vividly encouraged the new
“liberated” countries to apply for EU membership. The “Eastern Enlargement” finally took place in May 2004. In this thesis, the democratisation experience of two post-communist countries and now EU members, Poland and Hungary, is analysed. It argues that the dynamics of transition to democracy, as well as the historical experiences under Communism, are the main factors explaining the current state of the political systems of these two country cases. Most observers agree that both countries have been successful in establishing modern liberal democracies. This thesis tries to translate the classical model for consolidated democracies to Poland and Hungary, which differentiates between
“consensual” or “majoritarian” democracies. However, the conclusions drawn from the application of this model indicate that a “hybrid” model of democracy was established. This, in turn, has crucial implications for social policy, and in particular for the structure of the welfare state. The present thesis also illustrates that other variables, other than the foundation of new democratic political system, were at play in the shaping of their social policy and welfare states.
I H S — Florian Feldbauer / Scholar — 71