ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter argues that the integration of policymaking in the European Union has frequently occurred not manifestly in the formal central political arena but rather in a process of covert integration without being explicitly mandated by formal political actors. It has arguably led to a ‘competence creep’ from the national to the supranational level and from legislative to executive and judicial actors. Deepening integration through covert integration happens because it is politically more expedient and politically less costly. It reveals different patterns that may be theoretically grasped by rational choice institutionalism and the theory of incomplete contracts developed and applied in a multilevel context. The chapter will theorize and broadly empirically analyze the conditions and processes of covert integration and their ‘stopping points’ on the basis of the empirical policy examples.
