Europe and the Transformation of French Policy-Making: a Cross-Sectoral Approach

This article sheds light on the “Europeanisation” of French policy-making – defined as the national adjustment to European integration – and asks whether different policy domains experience the same kind of pressure to adjust. Four sectors representing different policy types are examined: monetary and budgetary policies, public services, agricultural policy and equal employment. This cross-sectional approach reveals different degrees of change and patterns of adaptation, whilst in no case the EU fully supplanted national decision-making. The authors’ conclusion suggests that regulative and redistributive policies are less conflicting with European integration than distributive policies at the core of the French welfare state, but that the latter are also strongly resilient and resistant to radical changes. Patterns of policy changes are highly complex and diversified, and their “path-dependency” is rooted in the political feasibility of public policy at the domestic level.