The Resource Integration Dilemma. A Competence-control Perspective on the Development of EU Capacities

The increasing importance of geopolitics resonates in EU policy-maker’s discourse. But without strong and autonomous central capacities in terms of force, money and administration, the EU will remain a geopolitical paper tiger. The ability to mobilize and use resources has been a crucial factor in modern state building. By contrast, the emerging resource integration in the EU is often manifestly deficient from a functional point of view. While the creation of a substantial fiscal capacity for the EU, a border protection force, a central agency for the administration and distribution of refugees or a European defense capacity make would lead to a cheaper and more efficient provision of public goods, the solutions which emerge are inefficient and crisis-prone. Faced with external shocks or internal imbalances, the EU does not seem to embark on the avanue of state-making but on a different institutional path. We argue that at the core of this institutional path is a ‘resource integration dilemma’. The member states as collective governors of the EU are faced with strong functional pressures to create European competencies in the form of resources. If goal divergence among the member states is low, the demand for control of European competencies is low – but the demand for joint resources can quickly and easily be met through the coordination of national resources (e.g. military assistance to Ukraine). If goal divergence is high, demand for control is high. While problem-solving could be achieved through central provision of resources, this is politically not feasible (e.g. joint energy supply in the 2020s and in the 1970s). In this constellation, the creation of broad, state-like resources (e.g. combat forces, fiscal redistribution, border protection etc.) is unlikely because competence gains are uncertain while control problems are high. Resource-based European competencies are only likely to emerge in narrowly circumscribed fields where competence gains are clear but specific and control problems are low, for instance because of the technical nature of the resource (e.g. the Galileo satellite system). A face-saving compromise between competence-seeking EU institutions and control-seeking member states may result in symbolic integration with few additional resources (e.g. the EU Chips Act). Rather, we can expect the emergence of a middle ground of hybrid capacities with varying degrees of jointness: Resources come both from the member states and from the EU, and control is also exercised by both. In an empirical survey of newly created EU bodies sind 1990, this pattern is confirmed. Theoretically, we argue that competence-oriented theories which see European integration as transnational problem-solving need to be supplemented by a control-oriented perspective which looks at the European integration as a process of locking in distributional gains and at the role of control-oriented actors in shaping the institutional structure of resource integration more generally.