Suchergebnisse

Chapter 1: Crises and European integration -- Chapter 2: Outcomes of crises of European integration -- Chapter 3: Pathways of crisis outcomes -- Chapter 4: Stagnation -- Chapter 5: Adaptation -- Chapter 6: Transformation -- Chapter 7: Regression -- Chapter 8: Evaluation and conclusions.

En accord avec une interprétation juridico-institutionnaliste de l'intégration européenne, les chercheurs suggèrent que la désintégration européenne impli- que la réduction du nombre d'États membres, de la production de politiques publiques partagées, ou des compétences des acteurs supranationaux. Au-delà de cette compréhension juridico-institutionnaliste, cet article propose trois stratégies nationales qui, en cas d'interdépendance asymétrique et de faibles incitations à des mesures communes, conduisent à la désintégration européenne : l'action unilatérale, la coopération bilatérale avec des pays tiers et le recours excessif à des acteurs tiers. L'analyse empirique de la désintégration lors de la crise pétrolière de 1973 et de la crise migratoire de 2015 a également des implications plus larges pour les crises les plus récentes de l'Union européenne.

AbstractDifferentiated integration, and the prospect thereof, is a prominent feature of European integration and policymaking. This article theorizes and demonstrates an explicit link between the threat of differentiated integration and the resolution of major European integration crises. Based on archival sources and secondary literature on differentiated integration, it shows how and why, in June 1984, the United Kingdom and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher agreed to increase the European Community's (EC) financial resources, despite their years-long insistence on budgetary restraint and their formal right to veto such a decision. The article argues that the prospect of a 'multi-speed' Europe, represented by Franco-German 'go-it-alone' power, threatened to exclude recalcitrant member states. Lacking more promising alternatives to continued membership in a reformed EC, the British government consented to European financial objectives. It also joined the other national governments towards deeper political integration and, eventually, a European Union, despite its actual rejection of European federal ambitions. The article's theoretical expectations and empirical findings on ways to overcome intergovernmental deadlock based on formal national veto rights have broader implications also for more recent European integration crises.

AbstractScholars of European integration are primarily interested in explaining change and variation over time. Indeed, given that integration has progressed over 50 years and competences have been transferred to the European level in policy fields, including energy, fast and coordinated action in the face of a major external threat might have been anticipated. Yet, as this article documents, member states struggled to establish a cohesive and solidary European response to the 2022 gas crisis, just as they had failed to cooperate effectively during the 1973 oil crisis. Building on recent literature on European polity development and integration through crises, this article argues that differences in national crisis affectedness and energy structures hampered cooperation. Such asymmetries became particularly visible on the part of France and Germany, the Union's two largest member states, who could have provided regional political leadership. Consequently, both the 1973 and 2022 energy crises led to very limited steps in European integration and collectively suboptimal policy outcomes, such as high energy prices and uneven access to energy resources.

AbstractWhen does European co‐operation and (further) integration not happen in the face of a major integration crisis? When do France and Germany not emerge as regional stabilizers, forging and uploading bilateral compromises to the European level? By developing a combined theoretical framework based on liberal intergovernmentalism and leadership approaches, this article analyses the European Economic Community's (EEC) reaction to the 1973/1974 oil crisis. Despite some favourable conditions, differences in domestic energy markets and relations with Arab oil‐producing countries complicated member state co‐operation. In turn, divergent economic philosophies and foreign policy priorities prevented France and Germany from filling the European leadership vacuum. As a consequence, the EEC did not find a unified stance on the Arab oil embargo, subordinated itself to US‐American dominance and undermined its common market via export restrictions for oil. The findings suggest that without minimum convergent member state preferences or compensating regional leadership, European integration and today's European Union risk stalling or even disintegrating.

AbstractNot least in view of the past decade, crises in the European Union (EU) have attracted much scholarly attention. At the same time, difficult decision-making situations and turning points have always been parts of the European integration process. Moreover, as founding and the two largest member states, France and Germany have been key drivers in the development of today's EU polity. Strikingly, a systematic analysis of major crises covering the entire integration process and the comparative role that France–Germany have played, so far is lacking. Scholars tend to focus on instances of 'successful' crisis resolution or, more recently, on a presumably hegemonic Germany. This article, by contrast, argues and demonstrates why and how France and Germany, together, have been essential for the management and resolution of European-level political controversies and deadlock. To do so, the article considers nine major integration crises. It highlights different ways and means of bilateral leadership and their resulting impact on European integration. Case selection includes both successful crisis management and instances of failed or absent leadership.

Published online: 01 Oct 2021 ; Why did the German government champion a debt-financed and grants-based EU corona recovery plan, despite the country's traditional aversion towards greater fiscal risk-sharing in Europe? To elucidate this question, this article critically assesses different explanatory factors cited in the academic literature and public debate to determine a country's response to pressing challenges. Tracing Germany's approach to the corona pandemic within the EU context, it finds that national material interests rather than (new) economic ideas or party politics were decisive. The timing, scope, as well as the limits of the German-inspired recovery plan for the fight against the corona crisis suggests at least as much continuity as change in Germany's position on EU fiscal policy. Yet, the findings also highlight Germany's enduring, and in fact reinforced, commitment to European integration and its preparedness to provide stability in moments of deep crisis for the EU.

Over the last decade, the European Union (EU) has faced a multitude of crises. Importantly, the various crises have led to different outcomes: Whereas the Eurozone crisis, for example, led to more European integration, the Schengen crisis arguably resulted in a partial European disintegration. Applying models of joint-decision problems in the EU, this paper analyses why and how these two crises led to divergent outcomes. It finds that higher levels of functional pressures, higher capacities of supranational agency, and more room for package deals enabled the EU to exit from joint-decision problems in the Eurozone crisis, whereas these and other potential exit mechanisms were widely unavailable in the Schengen crisis. Looking explicitly at the (missing) availability of exit mechanisms from joint-decision problems, this paper goes beyond the application of the usual European integration theories, which struggle to explain the variation in crisis outcomes. Furthermore, the paper makes a contribution to the more recent academic discussions on European integration/ disintegration, on the one hand, and the legitimacy-effectiveness gap, on the other hand.

This paper offers a theoretically informed and empirically grounded explanation of the EU's fiscal response to the coronavirus crisis. Deploying liberal intergovernmentalist theory, it assesses the making and form of the EU's first fiscal support package of 23 April 2020 in terms of national preference formation, intergovernmental bargaining, and policy and institutional choice. National preferences resulted both from the overall threat the coronavirus crisis posed to the EU's cohesion and from member states' different affectedness and fiscal position: While all agreed that some common fiscal response was necessary, the particularly hard-hit and fiscally stricken Southern EU countries called for large and unconditional support via the introduction of Corona bonds. The fiscally more stable and conservative Northern EU countries, in turn, preferred more limited measures and the use of existing instruments. Due to their larger financial resources, the fiscally more conservative countries determined the room for agreement and dominated the negotiations. Consequently, the form of the EU's eventual first fiscal support package mostly reflects the preferences and bargaining power of the Northern EU countries.

In 2015 and 2016, the European Union (EU) and (some of) its member states faced a very high number of asylum-seekers. Germany, which particularly was affected by this inflow, sought to 'europeanise' the phenomenon and to distribute the loads more evenly across the EU – but met major resistance. Contrarily to the widely held view that Germany, in recent years, had shaped European politics, it largely failed with its main policy proposals in the refugee and migrant crisis. To uncover the reasons, this contribution applies an analytical framework of political leadership and post-functionalist theory. Based on the latest academic research, relevant newspaper articles and self-conducted expert interviews, it is argued that there might have been supply of but not sufficient demand for successful German political leadership. The largely failed German leadership is illustrated by two characteristics: first, the setting-up and poor implementation of a European relocation mechanism for refugees; and second, a course correction with regards to its policy proposals by the German government itself in the course of the crisis.