is having on the processes of industrial relations within national systems.
Section 4 concludes by emphasizing that complexity, uncertainty and instabil-
ity look set to be the defining characteristics for the foreseeable future, with the
forthcoming enlargement of the EU in 2004 the major imponderable.
2 INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS AT EU LEVELS: A GLASS
HALF FULL AS WELL AS HALF EMPTY?
For many commentators, the story of EU social policy is one of a failure to
develop a vertically integrated system equivalent to that which exists within
individual nation states, i.e. one where there is a common and comprehensive
system of employment regulation. The list of reasons is extensive (for reviews,
see Falkner, 1998; Hay, 2000). It not only includes differences of viewpoint
about the role of social policy and the immensely practical difficulties of over-
coming the collective action problem of a significant number of sovereign
national states reaching agreement, but also fundamental considerations
intrinsic to the process of EMU. Essentially, EMU is seen as involving a form of
negative integration in which obstacles to a single market were removed rather
than positive in which measures were put in place to control its operation.
Critically important is the fact that, although the EU has developed a far more
extensive political dimension than other regional trading blocs, it lacks a
‘strong state protagonist’ (Traxler, 1996) to sponsor the development of a com-
prehensive system. Instead, national governments have been reluctant to cede
authority, leading to an affirmation of the principle of subsidiarity in the
Amsterdam Treaty. This means that core areas such as social policy are deemed
to be the responsibility of member states: ‘Europe deals only with matters
where an EU solution makes more sense’ (European Commission, 2000a: 3–4).
In Streeck’s (1996: 313) striking words, the European nation state appears
‘obsolete and alive at the same time: obsolete as the wielder of effective sover-
eignty over “its” economy, and powerfully alive as the most effective opponent
of the recreation of internal sovereignty at the international level’.
The result is that, although representative organizations of employers (the
Union of Industrial and Employers’ Confederations of Europe: UNICE), and
trade unions (the European Trade Union Confederation: ETUC), have emerged,
they have little authority compared to their national equivalents. The same is
true of the European-level sector organizations of employers and trade unions.
The EU may not have developed a vertically integrated system. From the
point of view of the development of a multi-level system, however, the glass is
far from being completely empty. The EU has a social policy framework that
can lay claim to principles, a framework of common minimum standards and
a process for adding to them. The Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997, which was the
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