Civic Integration Policies in Europe

Abstract

This chapter serves as a case study to explore whether the EU is the impetus for policy change in the direction of EU norms, even in the absence of compulsion, or whether it is underlying domestic factors that remain determinant. All member states, as we know, have signed up to the Common Basic Principles of Integration which state that ‘member states should develop national integration programmes, which emphasise civic integration and transmit “EU values” to newcomers’ and yet, as Table 5.1 shows, we have not seen EU-wide convergence in the direction of this norm. In Chapter 4 we saw that bottom-up Europeanisation, or more specifically the uploading of national preferences to the EU arena, at least partly explains the congruence between certain member states’ integration policies and the civic integration norm which has been championed at EU level. We saw clearly that the Netherlands had been highly successful in uploading norms to the EU level, and that Denmark had also been engaged in norm uploading and Europeanisation through horizontal policy transfer, using the EU as a collaborative arena to exchange policy ideas.