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Peers, Steve --- "Enhanced cooperation: the Cinderella of differentiated integration" [2017] ELECD 390; in De Witte, Bruno; Ott, Andrea; Vos, Ellen (eds), "Between Flexibility and Disintegration" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 76

Book Title: Between Flexibility and Disintegration

Editor(s): De Witte, Bruno; Ott, Andrea; Vos, Ellen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781783475889

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: Enhanced cooperation: the Cinderella of differentiated integration

Author(s): Peers, Steve

Number of pages: 16

Abstract/Description:

A Martian who was (for some alien reason) interested in differentiated integration within the EU would probably start by reading the EU Treaties. He, she or it would likely conclude that enhanced cooperation was the most common type of differentiated integration – since, unlike the other types, it is neither limited to certain Member States nor to certain policy areas. But our Martian would be wrong. For despite its potentially broad scope of application, of all the forms of differentiated integration forming part or linked to the EU legal order, the enhanced cooperation procedure has been used the least, and disappointed the supporters of differentiated integration the most. It could be said that enhanced cooperation is the ‘Cinderella’ of differentiated integration, left behind while its glamorous step-sisters (Justice and Home Affairs and Economic and Monetary Union) go to the flexibility ball. Why is this? This chapter will answer that question by looking at the past, present and possible future of the EU’s enhanced cooperation rules.