An Ever-Closer Union? Measuring Europeanization through an Expert Survey

Over time the EU institutions have accumulated an expanding portfolio of powers, with regards to the range of policy areas and the degree of involvement in policy-making. There are a limited number of studies that measure the expansion of EU policy-making competences but these measures rely on information derived from EU treaties, thus producing measures that only change across large periods of time. However, important decisions on the allocation of authority to EU institutions are also taken on a more regular basis through secondary legislation. This paper presents a new index of Europeanisation across policy areas that contains a more comprehensive assessment. Using an internet survey targeting academic experts in individual EU policy areas, this index provides information in two areas: first, the distribution of authority between EU institutions and national authorities across time and across policy fields; and, secondly, an assessment of the ideological content of EU legislation on the left-right dimension. The new data will allow researchers to supplement existing studies of how European integration policies and preferences across Europe. The paper presents the main trends found in the survey and examples of how the dataset can be used such as comparing how increasing the scope of EU integration in certain policy areas affects aggregate fluctuations in EU support.