ABSTRACT
The Euro-crisis not only risks discrediting the European integration process, but also all European Union (EU) policies, even where they have little to do with banking and sovereign debt. If this happens both the credibility of the policy within the EU and its external reach will be affected. The theoretical proposition that economic crisis limits a state’s or a region’s external influence might seem self-evident, and applied to the EU might even be said to be stating the obvious. Yet the claim deserves some empirical investigation if we are to better understand the way in which internal EU policies impinge on global governance. To address this question, the chapter discusses one policy case: competition policy. Competition provides an interesting research focus, as it is closely related to, but not at the core of, the debates regarding reforms to the EU’s economic governance. From a governance perspective, the policy provides a fascinating case of institutional change, as it has been subject to a series of major reforms in the 2000s: a response both to challenges facing it and to criticisms levelled at it. According to Wilks these reforms institutionalised pre-existing neo-classical/neo-liberal economic and political principles within a new legal-cultural framework (Wilks 2009: 271–2) and they seek to present the competition regime as depoliticised and independent of the vagaries of political whim. As the key actor in both the making and enforcing of the policy, the European Commission (delegating a great deal of its work to the Directorate General for Competition) has decentralised much of the enforcement of the policy to national competition agencies (NCAs), while at the same time retaining control of its general direction. Meanwhile it has pursued an internationalisation agenda.
