ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the conditions and processes of covert integration and its 'stopping points' and illustrates with concrete policy examples. Channels of covert integration are considered as an institutional and a policy change that emerges, once a formal political decision of integration has been taken that offers the possibility to be renegotiated and specified in the course of its application. The chapter focuses on a neofunctionalist perspective emphasizing a possible gap between original integration decisions and unintended deepening integration consequences. The Lisbon Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union distinguishes, for the first time, between legislative delegation and executive delegation and provides two separate procedures for 'delegated acts' and 'implementing acts'. This chapter argues that deepening integration in the European Union takes place not only front stage but also backstage. Deepening integration through soft modes of governance refers to the possibility that deepening integration may result from a general commitment to a policy goal that is non-binding.
