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The EU accession process of Croatia, Turkey and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia was high on the CoR agenda Wednesday evening. After hearing from Štefan Füle, Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy, the CoR adopted its opinion on enlargement strategy and the main challenges for the candidate countries tabled by rapporteur Georgios Papastergiou, Prefect of Pieria (EL/EPP). The debate among CoR members focused in particular on the progress made by Turkey and the relations between Turkey and Greece. The opinion assesses the progress made by each of the candidate countries on the road to accession and voices the CoR's considerable concern that many of the political commitments made by the candidate countries are not sufficiently transposed into concrete action on the ground.

The literature on new modes of governance suffers from a gap between the normative and the positive approaches to legitimacy. This article addresses this gap by studying the patterns of national stakeholders’ support for the Open Method of Coordination (OMC). The results of our survey demonstrate that the OMC receives greater support than previously assumed and that the support of national stakeholders is largely associated with their involvement in national procedures. These findings corroborate the assumptions of normative theories of participatory democracy about the importance of involvement. Furthermore, the study’s findings underline the pivotal role that national stakeholders play regarding matters of legitimacy in the EU’s multi-level system of governance.

The message was clear and universal: José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, needs to take a stronger leadership role to push through the Single Market Act, according to a debate on Thursday (18 November).

Simply put, the single market is the framework of rules that help goods, services, money and people move across borders. The single market means fewer hassles, taxes and paperwork at custom and immigration crossings. It's the reason mobile phone bills have declined 70% and airfares by 40% since 1992, according to the Commission. But too many European citizens and businesses don't see the benefits, and Lord Leon Brittan, a UK government trade advisor, said that's because the market has not fully delivered on its promises: "You can't buy goods online in other member states and small and medium-sized enterprises can't access other markets because of onerous requirements."

"Where are the concrete proposals?" he asked. Indeed, many of the 50 seem to lack punch, including: No. 7: Next year, the Commission will adopt a white paper on transport policy, which will propose a series of measures intended in particular to remove the remaining obstacles identified between national systems of transport. No. 10: Before 2012, the Commission will look into the feasibility of an initiative on the ecological footprint of products to address the issue of the environmental impact of products, including carbon emissions. The initiative will explore possibilities for establishing a common methodology to assess and label them. No. 32: The Commission will launch a consultation with the social partners (key labour and business representatives) in order to create a European framework for the advance planning of industrial restructuring.