In response to the recent crises in Europe, many governments have tightened their border controls despite considerable criticism from the EU Commission and civil society. While borders are at the core of recent crises, we lack systematic evidence of how governments publicly inform about border politics and justify measures. Therefore, we ask: How do EU governments communicate about borders? We analyze a comprehensive sample of press releases of the Austrian and German governments over 12 years (2009-2020). Applying a mixed-methods design, we employ automated text analysis, specifically latent semantic scaling (LSX) to scale documents regarding how they communicated permeability (openness and closedness) of borders and the state of affairs regarding a state of crisis and routine. Based on this quantitative analysis, we then apply qualitative text analysis to explore the nuances and patterns of this communication to gain in-depth insights into governmental stances about borders.

In this article, we propose a novel conceptualization of account-holding intensity - defined as both the frequency and diligence of account-holding - as an instrument for analysing the behaviour of account-holders in the accountability landscape of EU agencies. We examine the account-holding intensity of six major institutional EU account-holders through a complementary mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative survey data and qualitative interview data collected from directors and senior managers of EU agencies. Account-holding intensity is measured through the survey data, with the interview data providing detailed insight into why some account-holders are more/less active and/or diligent than others. The survey and interview data are furthermore triangulated with in-depth interviews with account-holders and unobtrusive indicators of account-holding intensity. This amounts to a comprehensive empirical review of the EU agencies' institutional accountability relationships, which reveals how different account-holders are driven by different institutional logics that are associated with different account-holding intensities.

European politicians have become increasingly concerned about the possible distorting effects of citizens not only being informed, but systematically informed about the European Union (EU). Against this background, this study assesses the role of EU knowledge in shaping the preference to vote to leave or remain in a (hypothetical) referendum on EU membership using cross-national survey data that were collected simultaneously in eight EU countries during the run-up to the 2019 EP elections. The surveys included a newly designed item battery of EU knowledge capturing both the accuracy as well as confidence in knowledge of the respondents. The results show that misinformedness is associated with a preference to leave the EU, the uninformed citizens tend to be undecided or not intending to vote, while the well-informed prefer to remain. Overall, our findings contribute to the ongoing debates about the role of misinformation in politics.

The European Union (EU) seeks to play a leading role in steering the private work of online content moderation, as demonstrated by numerous policy and legislative initiatives in the domain. Two initiatives, in particular, are shaping terrorist content moderation: the creation of a EU Internet Referral Unit and the adoption of a Regulation on preventing the online dissemination of terrorist content (TERREG). This article analyses these initiatives and their practical effects. In particular, it unpacks the and at the core of EU regulation in the realm of online terrorist content moderation, and how they security decisions across public and private spheres. Based on interviews, fieldwork observations and document analysis, we show how processes of referral and removal, and processes of flagging and filtering are key to EU-directed content moderation. In conclusion, we reflect on content moderation as a novel form of European security integration.

COVID-19 caused a major economic downturn, the like of which had not been seen since the Great Recession although the underlying causes of the two crises were very different; systemic risk versus a virus. Here we look at how flexible work practices, allied with adequate supports and lifelong learning opportunities, aided economic recovery following the earlier crisis in order to see if there are any lessons to be learnt for post-pandemic recovery. Overall, the results indicated that flexicurity provided a modest growth dividend during the Great Recession, typically no more than one percentage point. Of the individual components, the short-run results indicated that security along with life-long learning and part-time work proved the most beneficial, although flexible work practices also boosted growth, albeit to a lesser extent. For flexible labour markets, the long-run results indicated that the growth gains were highest in trusting economies with, or without, social partner engagement.

This article provides new perspectives on the persistent hierarchy between 'social' and 'economic' goals in European Union's (EU) economic governance. We operationalize insights from feminist economics and political economy to analyse the agenda-setting documents of the European Semester - the Annual Growth Surveys (AGS) - showing how the much-debated integration of social goals into the European Semester is fundamentally constrained by mainstream economic epistemologies. These epistemologies misrepresent interrelationships between the productive economy and the reproductive labour needed to maintain it. Using interpretive policy analysis, we show how multiple concepts and measurements used to conceptualize policy goals and impacts within the AGSs, coalesce to systematically misrepresent reproductive labour as a 'social' activity, an irrelevance, or a cost, rather than a macroeconomic input. This restricts the possibilities of enhancing the social dimension of the European Semester, in ways conspicuously ignored by the existing literature, which are of heightened salience in the wake of Covid-19.

The experiences of cross-border workers (CBWs) and the difficulties they face during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have been neglected in previous research. CBWs experience various stressors under normal circumstances, where they are often subjected to unequal working conditions and forced to transition between two different societies. The measures that were introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the implementation of physical borders, further worsened the situation for these individuals. Herein, we draw on qualitative interview data from 35 CBWs from the Czech Republic and Germany to explore their experiences of work, stress, support, and their positioning in society during the pandemic. We detail the dissatisfaction felt by CBWs regarding re-bordering, the lack of coordination in the crisis management, and the lack of support from national governments and the EU. This study provides unique insights into the difficulties and experiences of CBWs in a time of crisis.

The outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020 led to substantial upheaval in the EU's trade policy. Over the course of a year, EU Trade Policy as a field witnessed the launch of hitherto unthinkable ideas; the proliferation of a range of new buzzwords such as resilience, autonomy, and reshoring; and ultimately the arrival of a new consensus in the Trade Policy Review of February 2021. This article uses a discourse-theoretical approach (PDT) to retrace the political process that unfolded throughout this year, from the start of the COVID-19 crisis, to a fundamental dislocation of EU trade politics, and ultimately to the consolidation of a partial, temporary, and frail new hegemony within the policy field. Our goal is to explain the trajectory and the dynamics of this process by studying the discourses, the framings, and the political strategies that comprised the hegemonic struggle underlying it.

Under what conditions can organized labour successfully politicize the European integration process across borders? To answer this question, we compare the European Citizens' Initiatives (ECIs) of two European trade union federations: EPSU's successful Right2Water ECI and ETF's unsuccessful Fair Transport ECI. Our comparison reveals that actor-centred factors matter - namely, unions' ability to create broad coalitions. Successful transnational labour campaigns, however, also depend on structural conditions, namely, the prevailing mode of EU integration pressures faced by unions at a given time. Whereas the Right2Water ECI pre-emptively countered commodification attempts by the European Commission in water services, the Fair Transport ECI attempted to ensure fair working conditions most of the transport sector had been liberalized. EU integration attempts that commodify public services are thus more likely to generate successful counter-movements than the integration pressures on wages and working conditions that followed earlier successful EU liberalization drives.

City networks (CNs) are often enthusiastically regarded as key actors in processes of Europeanization and multi-level governance (MLG) policy-making in Europe and beyond. However, systematic research on highly contentious issues like migration is still scarce. Building on an understanding of MLG as a specific mode or instance of policy-making, in this article I seek to understand why and how CNs engage in MLG-like policy-making on a typical issue of state sovereignty. I apply the causal process-tracing method to analyse the genesis and policy actions undertaken in the last two decades by two migration CNs in different multi-level political settings: the Eurocities Working Group on Migration and Integration (WGM&I) in the EU and Welcoming America (WA) in the US. The results show that, notwithstanding the differences in the institutional settings, in both contexts instances of MLG policy-making have taken place in the shadow of the will of the national governments, which remain fundamental gate-keepers even in the EU supranational polity, where the European Commission has been particularly active in supporting migration CNs' initiatives.

This article explains why the European Union has remained strikingly cohesive during the Brexit withdrawal negotiations by focussing on the role played by its negotiator: the European Commission''s Task Force 50. The analysis demonstrates that the Task Force 50 set out to forge unity among the EU27 by exercising both subtle instrumental and direct political leadership. The Commission significantly influenced the outcome of the negotiations by shaping the agenda and process, brokering deals, and ultimately achieving a withdrawal agreement that all member states signed up to. Its transparent and consultative behaviour generated trust among member states, which allowed the Commission to play such a prominent role. These findings challenge the prevailing view that the EU has become increasingly intergovernmental at expense of the Commission. Drawing on original interviews, the article substantiates this argument by tracing the Commission's leadership activities in the run-up to and throughout the withdrawal negotiations (2016-20).

Although there has been much interest in British public opinion on Brexit, much less is known about how EU-27 Europeans view the Brexit negotiations. This is surprising, because Brexit confronts the EU-27 with difficult choices. Whereas accommodating the UK carries the risk of encouraging further countriesto leave the EU, an uncompromising negotiation stance increases the economic and social costs of Brexit. Using original survey data from 39,000 respondents in all EU-27 countries collected between the start of the Brexit negotiations and December 2018, this article shows that exposure to the economic risks of Brexit makes respondents more willing to accommodate the UK, whereas a positive opinion of the EU decreases their willingness to compromise. Moreover, many Europeans face an accommodation dilemma that moderates these preferences. Overall, the EU-27 public unsentimentally supports a Brexit negotiation line that safeguards their own interests best.

Public opinion on the EU has received growing attention in the last decades, with an ever-increasing number of studies examining various aspects of it. Surprisingly, most studies focus on attitudes towards the past and present of the EU, yet we know very little about public attitudes towards the future of the EU. This study helps to fill this research gap by examining attitudes towards the EU's long-term future using a novel approach. We developed eight concrete future EU scenarios based on an inductive analysis of qualitative survey data. Subsequently, respondents (in an independent survey) ranked their top three scenarios according to individual preferences. Using multidimensional unfolding, we show that these preferences form three clusters ordered along a more versus less EU dimension. In a second step, we used multinomial logistic regression to examine not only who supports which scenario (socio-demographics) but also which EU attitudes lead to which future preferences. The analyses identify distinct characteristics and attitudes that drive people's preference for a given scenario. Overall, we find that factors such as occupational levels or left-right attitudes are strong determinants of preferences for the future of the EU, and that specific EU support (performance and utilitarian evaluations) is more important than diffuse EU support (identity and affect).

European integration, and especially the European Court of Justice, has challenged the national character of social rights; the latter have become increasingly transnational. This contribution examines the impact of the Court at the street level. It analyses how Member State administrations handle the social rights of mobile EU citizens in practice in case they are granted discretion. Therefore, a framework of shades of compliance is developed that captures Member State responses to EU law beyond the dichotomy of compliance and non-compliance. I argue that Member State administrations tend to make the access to social benefits difficult. Still, there may be differences in the shade of compliance on the ground. Surprisingly, these differences cannot be explained by the party-political environment but depend to a high degree on exposedness. The claim is empirically supported by a comparative study of Austrian welfare (and migration) administrations' practices.