This article re-examines the division between 'optimists' and 'pessimists' within the literature on the Open Method of Coordination’s (OMC) effectiveness. Each of those 'camps' tends to focus on a different question. 'Optimists' are more concerned with the question of whether the OMC exerts an...

This paper traces the origins of the recently adopted general services directives of the European Union, and addresses the question why such an important piece of internal market legislation was adopted so recently, and anyway well after the 1992 deadline for the completion of the internal...

Abstract In the past, economic integration in Europe was largely compatible with the persistence of different national varieties of capitalism. While product market integration intensified competition, member states could build on and foster their respective comparative advantage. To date, this...

The debate on the Europeanization of public policies is a specific branch of the new field of research on Europeanization. It aims at understanding how national policies are shaped and changed due to European integration. This research is, however, still in its "infancy". The aim of this paper...

Abstract Europe’s ‘political space,’ its dimensionality and its impact on European policies have received increased academic attention lately. Yet, one very basic element of this political space, the party composition of EU member states’ governments, has never been studied in a...

There is on ongoing debate on how European labour law should best be described and understood. According to one view national and EU labour law should not be regarded as two separate legal systems. Instead this view stresses the symbiosis of national labour law systems and EC labour law. This...

Abstract: Although not originally foreseen in the founding Treaty, today the most important and widespread form of EU regulation in the internal market is concerned with the government of risk. Indeed, similarly to what occurred in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, the EU has in recent...

Abstract: The paper compares French and Dutch legal approaches in regulating the use of headscarves in public institutions as examples of divergent liberal legal cultures and national policies towards immigrant minorities. It shows that in France the principle of laïcité or state secularity...