Issues with Europe

This project seeks to examine the complex negotiation processes in European politics which often evolve in a discordant field with distinct actors at the regional, national and international levels by analysing disputes over European alpine transit policy with a comparative focus on Austria and Switzerland between the 1970s and 2000s. Based on a network-analytical approach, the project will analyse the interplay between political actors on the one hand and societal actors of the German- speaking alpine conservation movement (the Alpenschutzbewegung) on the other. The study aims to assess to what extent the environmental movement had an impact on European policy decisions at the national and supranational levels, and reconstruct the networks through which it exerted its influence. The case studies of Austria and Switzerland also offer the possibility of comparing the Euro-political networks of a state that joined the European Union (Austria) during the period under examination, and another that did not (Switzerland). From a theoretical point of view, the project contributes to a non- teleological, open-ended understanding of European integration. The project will be carried out jointly by the University of Innsbruck, the University of Basel and the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich and is broken down into three subprojects. Subproject A (LMU Munich) analyses how the conflicts between transport policies and alpine conservation were dealt with on the European level, in particular by the European Union and the Council of Europe. Subprojects B and C focus on regional and national authorities as well as the regional and transnational networks of the alpine conservation movement. Geographically, Subproject B addresses the disputes over alpine transit across the Brenner Pass against the backdrop of Austria`s joining the EU in 1995. Subproject C examines the debates about alpine transit over the Gotthard Pass, particularly in the context of the so-called "Alpen- Initiative", which in 1994 imposed a restrictive transport policy framework after the rejection of EEC membership in 1994 and had a lasting impact on Swiss-EU relations. The three case studies offer the possibility to write a transnational history of environmental movements and open a new perspective on Europeanisation. Methodologically, the coherence of the project relies on a common network analysis, based on a state-of-the-art digital research instrument, Gephi, a software for social network analysis and visualisation.

"Issues with Europe: A Network analysis of the German-speaking Alpine Conservation Movement (1975-2005)" examined European Alpine transit policy with a comparative focus on Austria and Switzerland between the 1970s and the 2000s. The project was carried out by the Universities of Innsbruck, Basel and Munich and was divided into three sub-projects. Sub-project A (Munich) analysed how the conflicts between transport policy and Alpine protection were managed at the European level, focusing in particular on the European Union and the Council of Europe. Sub-projects B and C focused on regional and national institutions as well as on regional and transnational networks of the Alpine protection movement. Geographically, sub-project B (Innsbruck) dealt with the debates on Alpine transit at the Brenner Pass against the background of Austria's joining the EU in 1995. Sub-project C (Basel) examined the debates on Alpine transit at the Gotthard, especially in the context of the so-called "Alpine Initiative", which in 1994 set a restrictive transport policy framework and left a lasting mark on Swiss-EU relations. The three case studies offered the opportunity to write a transnational history of the Alpine protection movement and at the same time opened up new perspectives on Europeanisation. The project as a whole focused on how and to what extent the Alpine protection movement was able to influence European policy decisions at national and supranational level. It turned out that the lines of argumentation of the activists in Austria and Switzerland hardly differed. In both countries, the opponents of transit inscribed themselves in the European environmental discourse and attributed an ecological pioneering role to the Alpine region. The EU played an important and at the same time ambivalent role. As a discursive point of reference, it was constructed as the abstract, distant "other" in contrast to the tangible "own". At the same time, the Alpine space only established itself as a political entity within the framework of European integration. The institutions of the EU were in turn an important addressee for the transit opponents. The activists saw in the EU both the origin of the problems and the authority within which they had to be solved. Austria's joining the EU in 1995 changed surprisingly little, as the activists in Tyrol had already been addressing their protests to the EU since the end of the 1980s and their forms of expression remained determined by the national characteristics of the respective political systems. The research project has produced numerous publications, which can be accessed via the project website: https://www.uibk.ac.at/projects/issues-with-europe.