Europe will be forged in crises and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises. (Jean Monnet 1978)
Introduction
What is the impact of crisis on European Union (EU) integration? Exploring continuity and change in EU policies and institutions, this Handbook takes stock of how and in what way crisis influences the EU. Since its inception, the EU integration project has been characterized by a mix of incremental change and integration spurts that usually have followed major crises. Understanding EU crisis and the EU response is thus key also to our understanding of the EU more generally, and the empirical findings and theoretical arguments will have relevance for the EU integration literature beyond the EU’s immediate responses to crises.
The numerous crises confronting the EU today combine to form the ‘perfect storm’ of conditions that make this particular historical moment in European integration so crucial to understand, theoretically, conceptually, and empirically (Riddervold and Newsome 2018). Over the last decade, the EU has faced an unprecedented number of challenges on multiple fronts. At the time of writing, the EU is embroiled in what has been referred to as its gravest crisis ‘since the integration project began’ (Fabbrini 2020). Summing up the EU’s initial lack of a common response to the Corona crisis, Greer (2020) writes: ‘A union that speaks often of solidarity between peoples initially saw little solidarity. A union often reproached for technocracy showed none of it. A union built on the freedom of movement of people and goods has become a chaotic continent of closed borders and export bans.’ The Corona crisis came on top of the many other crises the EU has faced in recent years. With the Brexit vote, one of the EU’s biggest and most influential member-states decided to leave the Union, posing existential challenges to the EU after sixty years of integration. Internally, populist parties and anti-EU sentiments have mobilized people across the continent, and member-states such as Poland and Hungary are facing new political threats as they drift further away from democratic governance. Culminating with the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, the EU has to contend with a more aggressive Russia making territorial claims or interfering militarily in the EU’s near abroad. Other areas of concern include Russia’s territorial claims in the Arctic and its intervention in the Syrian conflict from 2015. As a result of conflicts in Syria and other developing world hotspots, the EU has also witnessed an explosion of migrants coming to Europe in search for a better life—more than one million in 2015 alone. The EU must also confront a number of more long-term challenges with potentially far-reaching implications, not least the global financial crisis and challenges facing the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and a changing and more volatile international environment (cf. Caporaso and Rhodes 2016; Cross and Karolewski 2017; Hall 2014; Hume and Pawle 2015; MacFarlane and Menon 2014; Mearsheimer 2014; Pop 2015; M. Smith 2018; M. E. Smith 2018).
The case of Brexit illustrates that Europe might be in a stage of accelerating turbulence and crises (Ansell et al. 2017) that has triggered ‘institutional soul-searching’ among most EU member-states and within the EU institutions themselves. Similarly, the Corona crisis, with its very wide direct and indirect consequences for all sectors of society, has triggered a discussion on European solidarity, EU competences, and the future of the European project (Fabbrini 2020; Greer 2020). The European Commission’s White Paper on the future of the EU also illustrates how crises trigger debates that go to the core of how the EU should respond and how it should develop in the future. The White Paper established five scenarios for the EU by 2025, ranging from disintegration (what this volume refers to as a breaking down scenario) to more EU collective action. In short, these scenarios have been captured under the following titles: ‘1: Carrying on,’ i.e., following the current path of muddling through without any major changes and reforms; ‘2: Nothing but the Single Market’ excluding areas such as migration, security, and defence; ‘3: Those who want more do more’ based on coalitions of the willing; ‘4: Doing less more efficiently’ with a strong focus on further market integration leaving nonmarket-related affairs aside, and, eventually; ‘5: Doing much more together’ across a wide range of areas (European Commission 2017: 15–25).
By developing and exploring the relevance of a set of theoretically derived scenarios of the EU’s resilience in the face of crises, this Handbook aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of how crisis affects the EU and the drivers of EU integration. We start from the observation that scholars tend to expect that the cascade of crises facing the EU is likely to influence EU integration and governance. Often, these parallel crises are expected to undermine and threaten the EU project, not least due to what is seen by observers and scholars as the EU’s lack of appropriate policy responses (see for example Macfarlane and Menon 2014; Mearsheimer 2014; Posen 2014; Walt 2014). Others have argued that further EU integration has often followed in response to crisis, and that although of a different magnitude, today’s crises are also likely to lead to more and not less integration (Cross and Karolewski 2017; Cross and Ma 2015; McNamara 2015; Mény 2014; Genschel and Jachtenfuchs 2014; Schmitter 1970).
Against this background, this Handbook comprehensively explores the EU’s institutional and policy responses to crisis. Our analysis, moreover, aims to generalize empirical and conceptual knowledge on how the EU responds to crisis and what resulting predictions can be made about the EU’s future developments. This Handbook also offers a systematic discussion of how different EU integration theories understand and explain crisis. Our analytical apparatus thus serves as a toolbox for other studies and as a basis for discussions on the relevance of theoretical perspectives in capturing not only EU integration but also EU crisis and potential disintegration. Although there are numerous studies of various EU crises and crisis responses, the literature lacks a comprehensive overview like the one offered by this Handbook (see ‘State of the art’ below). At the same time, most of the chapters in this Handbook are stand-alone chapters on particular crises, institutions, policy areas, and theories. Whereas some chapters discuss a particular theory’s relevance for understanding and explaining crisis (Part II), others zoom in on various institutional responses (Part III) or examine specific policy crises and the EU’s response to each of them (Part IV). A final set of chapters offer commentaries on the broader relevance of this analysis (Part V).
We organize the remainder of this introductory chapter as follows. We first unpack the concept of crisis and describe how it is applied in this volume. Next, we develop three theoretically deduced scenarios on the EU’s putative response to crisis. The three scenarios build on different theoretical approaches in EU integration scholarship and are discussed in the chapters that follow. We also briefly discuss some methodological challenges involved when seeking to tease out the extent to which different mechanisms influence EU policies and institutions. The chapter then sums up novel empirical findings from different parts of the Handbook on the impact of crisis on EU policies and institutions, as well as the applicability of various theories to understanding these observations. The summary of findings also systematically addresses the Handbook’s main questions, focusing on what the case studies tell us about continuity and change in the EU, and hence the future of the Union. Overall, we use the structuring of the chapter sections to synthesize empirical findings across chapters, before discussing the overall impact of crises on the EU as such.
Although empirical insights vary across chapters, and so far with the exception of the EU’s (limited) response to the severe democratic challenges in Hungary and Poland, the volume finds that the EU has been surprisingly resilient in the face of crises owing to its ability to adapt and absorb, and if necessary, change, in response to crisis. This in turn suggests that the EU has reached a stage in its development where it has sufficiently consolidated to adapt to and cope with multiple and simultaneous crisis situations. Thus, although clearly demanding, crises arguably no longer challenge the fundamental core of the EU. There are, however, democratic challenges attached to the responses applied, and the EU’s responses also have implications for our wider understanding of the EU polity. There are for example implications related to a potential further differentiation of the Union, and the EU’s aspiring role on the global scene. The EU’s silent and very slow response to the undermining of democracy in Poland and Hungary—a situation exacerbated by increased executive powers in response to the Corona crisis—has led observers to question whether the EU is breaking down when it comes to the protection of core democratic values. We also see challenges for the EU project originating from polarization and voter mobilization not only linked to European integration but also globalization more broadly. These issues are discussed in great detail in the Handbook’s four commentary ...