ABSTRACT
The analysis begins with the trajectory of governance. The policies of the European Union play a significant mid-way role in an increasingly complex model of governance that, framed by geo-political, social and economic contexts, includes the national and the global. This is not a straightforward trajectory from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) or the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) through the EU and the Council of Europe to the nation-state; key national politicians and civil servants are actively involved in the construction of policy at both the European and the global levels also. And the European Commission is not only involved at other European levels and the global, but is often in a position of ‘checking and auditing’ the implementation of EU policy at the national level. Thus, the policy is less a straight line but a constantly looping back and forth. This chapter begins by contextualising the EU within this complex (backtracking) trajectory of inter-looping governance in order to highlight the significance of the focus upon it as a major policy-making level.
