Political Leadership and the Europe 2020 Strategy

The European Union has government institutions that are very unusual, making it unlike the government structures of the Member States that compose the Union. In part these specificities reflect concerns to ensure national governments and citizens are represented in its governance system; and in part the functions and relationships of the European Commission have been moulded to help support a process of transition to political solidarity across Europe. We would also suggest that European Union governance varies from policy to policy and that the European Union is a system of differentiated integration in levels of centralization (competition versus foreign policy) and also in territorial extension (Schengen/non-Schengen, Euro/non-Euro) (Heidbreder and Brandsma 2017). The European Union is a polity in the making but European policies have developed in a piecemeal way with a varying influence over time of Member States in their formulation and this in a context of globalization reshaping the Europeanization process itself (Leontitsis and Ladi 2017). The European Union edifice is characterized by incompleteness and fluidity, which is not a new thesis at least for political control on policies (Marks 1996).