This paper explores policy implications of the EU's Green Recovery on the Banking Union and the Capital Markets Union. The analysis is based on an assumption that the issuance of Next Generation EU （NGEU） bonds which started in 2021 to address the immense financial needs of the member states severely hit by the pandemic of COVID-19 would unintendedly facilitate deepening of the EU financial integration. Being mindful of the difficulty to tell how it will evolve and what it will bring about given that the current situation is unprecedented, the author concludes that the NGEU bonds can have significant impacts on the two major components of the EU's Economic and Monetary Union （EMU）.

　As for the Banking Union, the NGEU bonds issuance means an advent of new safe assets in the Single Market. The issuance is the first large-scale debt-mutualization among the member states which has not been envisaged in the earlier similar attempts such as European Safe Bonds （ESBies） and Sovereign Bonds-Backed Securities （SBBS）. There can be a good chance that it will reduce the home-country bias of the banking sectors in some southern member states which has impeded risk-sharing between the northern member states and the southern member states, leading possibly to an agreement on the creation of European Deposit Insurance System （EDIS）.

　Regarding the Capital Markets Union, issuance of the NGEU bonds means an increase of depth of liquidity in the common financial market which can attract cross-border investment both inside the Union and from outside of the Union. It will also strengthen the necessity to enhance efficiency of the securities settlement system through amendment of relevant community rules, including Central Securities Depositories Regulation （CSDR）, and development of a pan-European payment and settlement infrastructure.

　Nonetheless, the author suggests that the degrees of impact on the two components of the EMU will differ from each other. On the one hand, the impact on the completion of Banking Union which requires EDIS is unclear due to its highly politicized character surrounding risk-sharing. On the other hand, the impact on the upgrading of Capital Markets Union is rather straightforward and evident, even though it is limited. Another breakthrough would be needed to realize a harmonization of insolvency laws of the member states; the most important and difficult part of the project.

　This paper has addressed three research questions: a balance between the level of ambition and burdens or costs of transition; political or social acceptance beyond economic or technical feasibility; and ways to alleviate unintended social consequences. The significance, opportunities, and challenges of the European Green Deal are structured and framed along these three questions. The paper looks at inequity between member states and within a member state, especially focusing on a vulnerable group of society. The scale of policy changes and the level of costs associated with the changes are illustrated in cases of carbon pricing on road transport and buildings, coal phase-out, and a shift from Internal Combustion Engine vehicles. Experiences in France and Germany could provide useful inputs to the EU process to reach a consensus on the final designs of the Fit For 55 package.

　Carbon pricing is regressive in nature. Opportunities and costs associated with carbon pricing are unevenly distributed across countries, sectors, income groups, and generations. There is a high risk of disproportional impacts on the low-income or vulnerable households. Therefore, it is important to combine carbon pricing with complementary or companion measures addressing social security or/and structural changes. It is also essential to ensure that carbon pricing will be accompanied by a targeted and well-functioning re-distribution system. Such a system should provide both direct income support as a relief measure to reduce adverse effects of carbon pricing on vulnerable households and support for green investments to help them reduce energy costs in the long-term. Revenue-neutrality and ring-fencing the additional revenues for climate protection are key to political and social acceptance. Perceived unfairness, if not addressed by re-distribution, would cause discontents among those vulnerable consumers who are hit hardest by increasing energy costs, which may cause social unrest and create political turmoil in the worst case. Technical or policy solutions are necessary to address inequity, yet not sufficient. It is equally important to secure an open, transparent, and inclusive process to engage citizens in deliberation for a social pact. Elaboration on the policy designs as well as participation processes could achieve and increase political acceptability and feasibility.

　The EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement entered into force on 1 February 2020 （at 11pm on 31 January, BST）, and the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement applied provisionally as of 1 January 2021 and came into force on 1 May 2021. After Brexit, even after the referendum on 23 June 2016, the EU was searching for a new global strategy: the EU has reconfigured its external relations; and the internal political dynamism has also been reconfigured among its twenty-seven member states.

　The UK has been one of the most powerful among EU member states: economically the second largest and militarily the very strongest, if we observe their power resources through the figures of GDP and military expenditures as of 2016. Looking back to the 1970s, as the aggregate economic power resources of its member states increased with the UK accession, the EC became an international actor, often called as a civilian power. After the Cold War, the EU even envisioned its security strategy: ESS in 2003 and a Global Strategy in 2016. On the other side, the UK has often been called as an awkward partner, which stopped or slowed down the EU's integration process.

　With Brexit, the EU should need to change its global strategy for foreign and security policy and for economic and monetary policy. Brexit should also change the internal politics among remaining EU member states as a Franco-German leadership would no more be challenged by the awkward partner. The future relationship between the EU and the UK was formulated on paper, but we have yet to observe its real nature. This symposium was successful in starting our academic debates with five brilliant papers by Masahide Kobayashi （on EU security and defence policy）, Sara Konoe （on politics of financial integration）, Ken Takeda （on intergovernmental politics among EU member states）, Yoko Iwama （on German leadership） and Daisuke Ikemoto （on UK-EU relations）. Yoichi Usui was instrumental in planning this symposium.

　European Green Deal is one of the top priorities for von der Leyen Commission. While climate action is at the heart of the European Green Deal, it covers wide range of policy areas including those beyond the scope of traditional climate action, such as budget and finance. To accelerate climate action under the European Green Deal, the EU set the objective of achieving climate neutrality in 2050 and enshrined it in the European Climate Law. While developing policies and measures toward achieving this objective, the role of natural gas as a transitional technology has been emerged as a point of political confrontation. For example, the Member States and other stakeholders are divided over whether natural gas should be recognized as a "transitional activity" under the Regulation （EU） 2020/852 （so called Taxonomy Regulation） or not. While climate neutrality objective is widely shared within the EU as its long-term goal, transition toward achieving the objective remains as a key political issue. On the other hand, there is a notable development to underpin such transition: the principle of 'do no significant harm' （DNSH principle）. It has been established through the EU budget negotiation, particularly in the context of establishing the Next Generation EU. Regulation （EU） 2021/241 establishing the Recovery and Resilience Facility defines the term 'do no significant harm' by referring to the Article 17 of the Taxonomy Regulation and decides that the facility "shall only support measures respecting the principle of 'do no significant harm' ". Similar provisions are included in the Regulation （EU） 2021/1060 （common provision regulation） and the proposal by the European Commission to establish the Social Climate Fund. While the Taxonomy Regulation is established to provide guidance to private investments, DNSH principle is applied to public investments by the EU. It could be a tool to ensure consistency among different policies and measures under the European Green Deal.

　In 2009, when the Lisbon Treaty came into force, the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union （CJEU） expanded even in the migration and asylum seekers policy areas. That seems to be a significant change because these policy areas are recognized as fundamentally crucial for member states, and reinforcing the CJEU role would restrict the autonomy of member states. This expansion is exemplified by the increasing accumulation of CJEU case laws, particularly by the case laws of preliminary rulings.

　This article examines the effect of the expansion of the CJEU in the policy areas, where member states keep their autonomy against European Union （EU） organizations. In particular, we question if this expansion has transformed the nature of the relationships between member states and the EU.

　To achieve this goal, this article provides a case study of the case laws of the CJEU, taking "the EU Return Directive" as a research target. "The EU Return Directive" is essentially important because we can see the conflicting relationships between member states, which try to keep their policy autonomy, and EU organizations, which try to protect the fundamental human rights of immigrants. In particular, the study focuses on the case laws of CJEU, identifying which case laws are essential for the development of this policy area by quantitative and qualitative analyses.

　In conclusion, two implications are obtained. Firstly, there are case laws that prevent the governments' actions and the implementation of their domestic laws. These case laws are expected to affect the protection of fundamental human rights of immigrants positively by preliminary rulings. Secondly, however, there is still a diversity of policy implementation among member states without sufficient policy harmonization. As a result, the EU Return Policy has involved ineffective systems, and the expansion of the CJEU has not transformed the nature of the relationships between member states and the EU.

　While free movement of EU citizens has been the primary cornerstone of the European integration project, recent multiple crises seem to cause some challenges to the principle of free movement in the European Union. This article analyzes the politicization of free movement in the EU, especially its politicization in relation to the national welfare state.

　It has long been recognized that there can potentially be tension between intra-EU free movement and national welfare states. According to Ferrera, it can be understood as the tension between the logic of 'closure' and the logic of 'opening'. On the one hand, historical nation state building has accompanied boundary buildings among European states based on the logic of 'closure'. On the other hand, the European integration that transcends such national boundaries may be conceptualized as processes of boundary 'opening'. From this perspective, the relationship between free movement of persons and national welfare state corresponds to the one between the logic of 'opening' and the logic of 'closure'. This potential tension between welfare states and free movement has increasingly been visible since the eastern enlargement, and the politicization of free movement became highly salient in the EU in 2010s. The extent of politicization, for instance, can be seen in the letter to the EU in 2013 from the interior ministers of four member states including Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom publicly expressed its concern for 'benefit tourism'.

　This article examines the process of politicization of free movement in the EU, and how the EU and the member states respond to it. For the purpose, it firstly analyzes the jurisprudence of the CJEU on the Union citizenship, and secondly, the policy responses and party politics in two member states-Germany and the United Kingdom-are analyzed. Through these analyses, it intends to uncover how these two logics of 'closure' and 'opening' are negotiated and coordinated between two levels, namely, the EU and the member states.

　How can "pushbacks" be challenged and regulated? This article analyzes the European Union's （EU） external immigration policy from the perspective of constitutionalism. It establishes a conceptual framework to understand the dynamics of the EU's external immigration policy, shedding lights on the role of the actors outside the EU. By doing so, it aims to critically examine EU constitutionalism, which fails to protect human rights of the people on the move.

　"Pushbacks" are a set of measures to refuse the entry of people on the move into EU member states' territory without individual assessments, or to abandon them at sea. As a result of the "pushbacks," the human rights of the people on the move―including the substantive rights （e.g., the right to life） and the procedural rights （e.g., the right to a fair trial）―are violated, despite the existence of EU constitutionalism. Although the EU claims to restrict its power on the basis of certain values such as human rights and the rule of law, the EU and its member states infringe on these values in the context of the "pushbacks". Nevertheless, the literature on the EU's external immigration policy does not adequately explain how the "pushbacks" are regulated, particularly by outside-EU actors.

　Against this background, this study explores the concept of "constitutionalization from outside": the process by which diverse actors, who are not formal participants in the EU's decision-making, attempt to restrict the power of the EU and its member states, based on certain values （such as human rights）. Using this concept, this article examines ⑴ who criticizes the "pushbacks" in what way and ⑵ how the EU institutions and the member states have reflected such criticisms on the external immigration policy. It reaches three conclusions. First, the NGOs made accusations against the EU, and these accusations not only constitute the attempts to hold the EU legally accountable, but also relativize the EU's justificatory discourse. Second, such a development is the background for certain improvements, but some member states continue to exclude people on the move with the so-called "pullbacks". Third, consequently, EU constitutionalism does not successfully realize the value of human rights protection. Thus, this article contends that EU constitutionalism needs to be relativized and complemented by another constitutionalism―global constitutionalism.

　This article discusses the problems regarding the commissioners' cabinets and the series of reform the Commission has implemented to address them. The analysis examines the rules and agreements governing the composition of the cabinets, the members' professional ethics, and information disclosure on contacts and communications with the EU institutions. The article argues the implication on the Commission's transparency in the discussion on legitimacy of the EU by identifying the features, backgrounds, and significance of the transformation of the cabinet system.

　The cabinet system was introduced in the ECSC Commission under the influence of French administrative culture. Cabinets were expected to lubricate the horizontal and vertical relations between the commissioners and the DGs. However, in the early days, cabinets used to be composed of member states bureaucrats of the same nationality as the Commissioner and had been criticized as national enclaves. The internal process in the cabinets in those days was not transparent, but its black box simultaneously extracted the compromises from the member states and played an effective coordinative function.

　Based on the recognition that such a cabinet system introduced an intergovernmental dynamism inside the community institution, the Commission was driven to establish new rules for its reform. The Prodi Commission set a series of internal rules governing the number of cabinets' members, code of conducts, nationalities, and the status of retired members. Succeeding Commissions strengthened the rules on nationality and grades of officials, thereby denationalizing the cabinet system and optimizing the internal working of the Commission. However, this change made a cabinets system unable to foster citizens trust toward the EU. Consequently, the Junker Commission and the Von der Leyen Commission set new rules and agreements disclosing the information on the cabinets' meetings with groups and individuals outside the Commission, which successfully enhanced its transparency.

　Transparency is an integral part of throughput legitimacy and of accountability, but its role and significance are highly depending on the features of the organization. The article concludes that the chronological gap between the commencement of organizational denationalization and the expansion of information disclosure does not mean that the Commission was too late to initiate the reform, but that the Commission properly addressed the problems pursuant to the features of the cabinets in the community institutions in each phase of European Integration.

　The EU is evolving its trade strategy in search of the fruits of economic growth. "Global Europe （2006）" used FTA as a power tool and became a watershed for EU companies to acquire overseas markets. SMEs account for 99.8％ of non-financial firms and 65％ of employees, forming the "economic backbone" in the EU. EU growth cannot be achieved without the growth of SMEs.

　In this paper, I observed the process of organically integrating "SME promotion measures" into "Trade strategy" from the historical background of SME promotion measures. "European Charter for Small Enterprises （2000）", "the Small Business Act for Europe （2008）", "COSME（2014）" were implemented, and the idea of "Think Small First" principle has come to be incorporated into the trade strategy.

　Since 2008, SME provisions have been increased in EU FTAs. EU-Canada （CETA） was the first to pursue the benefits of SMEs in the FTA. In the EU-Japan EPA, a "chapter" specializing in SMEs was established for the first time. Support for SMEs is becoming a "common norm" in FTAs, as evidenced by the treatment of maximizing profits and improving the business environment for SMEs. It also promised a mechanism for the authorities to take check-and-action, and providing one-stop information to SMEs that tend to fall into the information vulnerable. As CETA → TTIP negotiations → EU-Japan progressed, inclusive philosophy including SMEs in the trade strategy and SME promotion measures built a "reciprocal relationship", and the position of SMEs in FTA was strengthened.

　In the EU, there is a problem that only 2.4％ of SMEs export outside the region. Therefore, I investigated the export effect of SMEs by FTAs. Of the countries with South Korea, Canada, Japan, and Vietnam, I confirmed high growth rates in South Korea and Canada. In addition, I searched for FTA business success stories. What they have in common is that small and medium-sized enterprises are realizing the merits of ensuring cost competitiveness due to tariff reduction, and reducing document procedures related to exports. Barriers have been reduced, probably because of the EU's strategic building capability, negotiation ability, and rule-making ability, and support for SMEs have been accepted as "common norms" that have a mutually beneficial relationship with EU trade strategy. However, there are challenges. The role of authority to support SMEs between the EU and member states, low FTA utilization rates of SMEs, etc. Although there may be problems such as lack of information on FTAs and complicated procedures, policymakers need to improve the environment so that more SMEs can use FTAs.

　This paper takes a case of the new Flight Time Limitations （FTL） established by European Aviation Safety Agency （EASA） which requires to move shared competences to the EU and examines how the UK has been involved in its legislative process, and whether the UK has made any impact on the final version of FTL. At the same time, the paper confirms how the domestic discussions were settled in case there was a gap between national law and new FTL as EU law.

　In 2016, the new FTL mandated for all commercial airlines in the EU. Before that, member states could have applied their own FTL for those provisions that were higher standards than FTL set by the EU. The UK could have maintained all provisions as national law until 2016 and was the only country which has had no domestic dispute nor implementing process of FTL. Therefore, it is possible to view a series of intensive discussions on the transition of competence with the introduction of new FTL.

　EASA published the draft papers in 2010 and received feedback from various stakeholders including member states. Civil Aviation Authority （CAA） of the UK has proposed 3 revisions as their feedback, and EASA has reflected some parts of them in the amended papers which responded to those feedback in 2012. And again, EASA collected some more feedback from member states and published the final papers in 2014. The Transport Committee of the House of Common raised 3 concerns and urged the UK government to ask EASA to review them. The UK government did not accept all concerns but requested some amendments to EASA.

　After analysing those documents and discussions, it was concluded that EASA has reflected some of the suggestions raised by the UK. Although the result does not indicate that the member states can always affect the legislative process of other shared competence areas but showed that UK has involved in the process and made an impact on the final version of FTL in this case. Also, as the way of filling the gap between national and EU law, it was confirmed to provide alternative interpretation and to request efforts within the government.