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This book is the most comprehensive study of the European member states available. It covers the principal member states in separate chapters, as well as bringing together the smaller member states in comparative groupings, and also includes a chapter on the new member states. The country chapters look at the wider political issues associated with integration and not just policy machinery. In order to help readers understand the interaction of the member states, there are sections which cover analytical and empirical themes such as EU member relations and the European economy.
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.