Symbolic Politics or Effective Burden‐Sharing? Redistribution, Side‐payments and the European Refugee Fund

Eiko R. Thielemann

Journal of Common Market Studies, 2005, vol. 43, issue 4, 807-824

Abstract: Explicitly redistributive EU policy instruments are rare. This article seeks to account for the recent establishment of the European refugee fund (ERF), and assess its effectiveness in ‘promoting a balance of efforts in receiving and bearing the consequences of displaced persons’. It argues that the decision to create the ERF can be interpreted as an act of partly solidaristic, but mostly symbolic, EU politics. The ERF's redistributive rules are characterized by a side‐payment logic in which countries that possess the greatest potential (or most credible threat) to cause difficulties in other areas of EU policy‐making are most influential when it comes to the distribution of EU spoils. While this logic can facilitate moves towards further integration, it undermines the achievement of the EU's redistributive objectives.

Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5965.2005.00597.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:43:y:2005:i:4:p:807-824

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0021-9886

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Common Market Studies is currently edited by Jim Rollo and Daniel Wincott

More articles in Journal of Common Market Studies from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().