Abstract
European integration has been driven by crisis since the 1950s. What distinguishes the most recent crisis context in Europe is its degree of complexity, duration, and interdependence. To understand the current chapter in European integration, one must first evaluate the unusual, combined effects of the five overlapping crises that have surfaced since 2008. I develop a general framework of analysis designed to help us understand Europe’s novel crisis context, and then apply it to the Eurozone crisis, the Russia–Ukraine crisis, the crisis of migration, Brexit, and the crisis in the transatlantic relationship. What emerges from the comparative analysis is that the level of interactive complexity generated by this succession of crises has prompted the EU to respond in ways that has brought the Union incrementally closer to “stateness.”
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Notes
- 1.
For an excellent overview of these traditional European integration theories, see Rosamond (2000).
- 2.
See for example the discussion of “intergovernmental institutionalism” in Moravcsik (1991).
- 3.
Sandholtz, in a later piece, advances a similar argument, one that stresses the importance of the geopolitical security crisis resulting from the unification of Germany and the end of the Cold War in providing the main impetus for the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s (Sandholtz 1993).
- 4.
For an overview of postfunctionalism and the new intergovernmentalism, see Hooghe and Marks (2019).
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
For a discussion of crisis that focuses on two dimensions—time and intensity—see Seabrooke and Tsingou (2019).
- 8.
For an overview and analysis of the Eurozone crisis, see Bermeo and Pontusson (2012).
- 9.
Contrast this with the two signature crises of the pre-Maastricht period (the changing international economy in the 1980s and the end of the Cold War in 1989/90), which were primarily if not exclusively experienced at the elite level.
- 10.
As we shall see below, a marked drop-off in intensity accompanied by lingering uncertainty is a feature of subsequent crises in Europe, most notably the Russia/Ukraine crisis and the Trump crisis.
- 11.
A second line of conflict was between members and non-members of the Eurozone, although this ultimately proved to be less salient over the course of the Eurozone crisis.
- 12.
“… Austrian banks have extensive business relations with Russia, the Czech Republic fears for its engineering exports, Poland is concerned about the food export, Finland and the Baltic countries are dependent on Russian gas supplies…” (Veebel and Markus 2016: 137).
- 13.
- 14.
For an overview of these and other issues relating to the EU’s refugee crisis, see the JCMS Special issue edited by Niemann and Zaun (2018).
- 15.
The list includes the U.S. abandonment of the Paris Climate Accords in 2017 and of the Iran nuclear treaty in 2018, as well as the levying of tariffs on aluminum and steel in 2018.
- 16.
For a review and analysis of transatlantic relations between 2008 and 2016, see Anderson (2018).
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Anderson, J.J. (2021). A Series of Unfortunate Events: Crisis Response and the European Union After 2008. In: Riddervold, M., Trondal, J., Newsome, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of EU Crises. Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51791-5_45
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