Public Goods in a federal Euope - Policy Brief

Helena Kreuter, Michael Thöne,

Vision Europe / März 2021 /Policy Brief, FiFo Bertelsmann Stiftung (ed.)

Abstract:
Europeis tobecome stronger and more sovereign byproviding more and better Europeanpublic goods (EPGs). Examples of EPGs are a common European asylum policy, shared instruments to prevent future pandemics or a European reduced-hours payment scheme. The European Union (EU) should take on more of the tasks to which it can lay claimby virtue of its size and function. Eu-rope should become more European. In order to make goodontheseclaims, developed by Ber-telsmann Stiftung’s Vision Europe working group, the Union more than likely will have to assume more of the features of a cooperative federal state.This will beeven more evidentafter the Coronavirus crisis.European strength and sovereignty, European common goods and European federalism are closely intertwined. With this in mind, we examinethe federal dimensions of Europe and its potential strengthening through more EPGs, by shedding light on different aspects of the European multi-level system.Putting the concept of European common goods into practice requires one to spell outmore clearly the way forward and to know how these EPGs can then be set to work. The present policy brief and the underlying paper address the following issues: first, the appropriate institutional framework for the introduction and provision of European public goods; second, how best to phase inthatprovision within the European multi-level systemof governance. For this purpose, we usetwo central analogies.With the first analogy, we ask whether the EU as a sui generispolitical entity would not be better understood by beingexplicitly viewed as a co-ex-istence of federal state and confederation.The second analogy compares the EU –especially its federal component–with the German model of cooperative federalism or “administrative federal-ism”. From the strong and weak points of this model, much can be learned in terms of strength-ening the EU via more EPGs.