Introduction

The many challenges of the

Crises are not a new phenomenon in the history of the European integration
process. On the contrary, they have accompanied it since its early days – the
empty chair crisis in 1966, the phase of ‘Eurosclerosis’ in the 1970s, the crises
of world economy in 1974/1975 and 1980 to 1982, or the ratification crisis in
1992 and 2005, to recall just a few examples. In a sense the whole integration
project is one that is the result of crisis, namely the two devastating World Wars
that have taken Europe to the edge of the abyss, and pushed the European gov-
ernments to give up parts of their sovereignty and strive for an ‘ever closer
union’.
What is new in the current crisis situation is rather the sheer quantity of dif-
ferent challenges the European Union (EU) confronts and that seem to increas-
ingly overburden the European institutions as well as the cohesion of the
Member States. Unprecedented are also the centrifugal forces that have
developed over the past years. The rise of Eurosceptic movements and the entry
of nationalist and anti-European parties into Parliament, but also the openly dis-
cussed exit scenarios and models of differentiated integration are no less of a
turning point in the integration process. At the same time, the current crises that
have arisen over the past decade show more clearly than ever how deeply the
lack of problem-solving capacities is rooted in both the Union’s construction,
and in the Member States’ prevalent unwillingness to solve crises beyond their
special interest politics. This has led to a situation in which the idea of an ‘ever
closer union’ has become a contested concept, and even committed Europeanists
no longer consider it impossible for the EU to disintegrate. In other words, the
many crises confronting the EU have become a crucial test for the integration
project itself. To cope with this situation is ‘the challenge of Europe’ upon which
this volume aims to shed light.
A decisive aspect of the current crises is the fact that they are no longer
limited to certain and distinct fields of action within the EU or its Member
States. The European sovereign debt crisis, for example, has proven to be more
than a mere economic or fiscal issue, just as the refugee and migrant crisis, or
the re-strengthening of nationalism and populism go beyond the political realm.
Rather, these create challenges to the EU as a political, economic and legal com-
munity, but also as a community of values. “Whatever happens, happens in
2 A. Grimmel
multiplicity”, to echo Luhmann – and necessarily seeks multiple solutions within
the different dimensions of the integration project.
Against this background it would fall short of the EU’s different challenges to
examine these from a unidimensional or ‘unidisciplinary’ perspective. This
volume will therefore approach the contemporary problem-laden situation of the
EU by offering a comprehensive evaluation of the multiplicity of challenges it
faces from an interdisciplinary point of view. Based on political science, legal,
economic and sociological perspectives, the volume will not only deal with dif-
ferent perspectives on the EU’s current state of affairs. It will also look at the
practical implications with regard to the EU’s problem-solving capacities in a
number of in-depth case studies on the most contentious current issues; and by
discussing the EU’s preparedness for coping with these and upcoming issues:
What is the nature of the different crises the EU faces, and are there similarities
that they share? How did the challenges come about, and how can we understand
these appropriately from different theoretical perspectives? Is the leitmotif of an
‘ever closer union’ still the cure or part of the problem? How far are the different
challenges a result of the specific construction of the integration project? What
are the implications for the EU, its institutions, its constitutionality and its demo-
cratic foundations?
The chapters in this book address these and other pressing questions that
directly or indirectly arise from the current state of the EU, but also reflect upon
the integration project itself and its prospects. The contributions in Part I aim to
provide a comprehensive outline by approaching the EU’s challenges from spe-
cific disciplinary perspectives, and by addressing the relevant current discus-
sions. Based on this, Part II offers a number of empirical studies and in-depth
analyses of selected fields and issues. The objective here is to approach the chal-
lenges of the EU by examining evidence-based case studies to develop a deeper
understanding of the manifold dimensions of the crisis, and how these display
themselves in practice. Against the backdrop of these case studies, Part III will
turn to the different dimensions of the European integration model itself by dis-
cussing the existing institutions, problem-solving mechanisms and methods, and
look at whether these are sufficient to address the imminent tasks.
Part I begins with an analysis by Desmond Dinan of the political challenges
of the integration project. In his chapter, Dinan examines the evolution and key
characteristics of EU governance from the perspective of the myriad political
challenges facing the integration project. He conceives of the European Union as
a political entity that exists primarily to address collective action problems con-
fronting its Member States. Originally these were narrow and specific; later they
became more general and far-reaching. As a result, he emphasizes, the policy
scope of the EU has increased dramatically. So, too, has the EU’s membership.
Dinan also points to the fact that, at the same time, the institutional design of the
EU has remained remarkably stable, though the roles and responsibilities of the
institutions have changed considerably, due to treaty reforms, judicial decisions,
inter-institutional arrangements and political precedents. He argues that EU gov-
ernance – the framework in which decision-making takes place – has struggled
 Introduction 3
over the course of the EU’s development with the challenges of procedural effi-
ciency, policy delivery and democratic legitimacy, especially in light of a
growing cast of actors at the national and supranational levels, a wider range of
policy problems needing solutions at the European level, a plethora of crises
confronting the EU and a rising tide of Euroscepticism.
Chapter 2 by Markus Kotzur in turn examines the legal challenges of the
European Union in the post-Lisbon era. He draws attention to the fact that
although the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) and the Treaty on the Func-
tioning of the European Union (TFEU) may have abandoned the term “com-
munity/communities”, this semantic shift does not at all outdate the community
idea(l) as a core element of the European integration process. In his analysis, the
EU’s aim to form an ever closer union at the same time re-endorses the founda-
tional community concept and sheds light on the fact that this very community –
being a continuous process rather than an ever-to-be-achieved status – remains
unfinished. Where, in contrast to the Member States, a common national identity
is missing, he claims that the decisive means to form an ever closer union is the
law. Kotzur takes up this generally accepted premise that was already stated by
the Commission’s first President W. Hallstein and, in a first step, analyses the
potential and the limits of a (constitutional) endeavour not only to base a polit-
ical community on the rule of law but also to shape – if not create – a political
community by the rule of law. He points out that all shortcomings regarding this
rule of law are more than occasional failures of the Union’s constitutional
system: they challenge the integration project as such. In a second step, the
chapter addresses these challenges, using (1) the rule of law crisis (e.g. the rule
of law mechanism vs. Poland, violations of Union law in the course of the finan-
cial crisis), (2) the solidarity crisis (e.g. within the financial and the refugee
crises), and (3) an overall crisis of belongingness to the EU (Brexit, Grexit, tend-
encies of re-nationalized policies in the Member States, future accession) as
fields of reference. Finally, Kotzur offers a reconstruction of the integration
process as “crisis governance” in the course of which the law sometimes plays a
reactive, sometimes a pro-active role and sometimes is disregarded altogether.
In Chapter 3, Ryszard Rapacki and Malgorzata Znoykowicz-Wierzbicka turn
to the economic challenges of the integration project. The guiding question of
their study is whether the design of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)
lies at the heart of the EU’s crisis. Their chapter particularly discusses the effect
of the EMU’s institutional design on its operation, with special emphasis on eco-
nomic governance in the EMU and its evolution. With a view to fully understand
the consequences of a monetary union without a full-fledged economic union,
the optimum currency area (OCA) theory is used by Rapacki and Znoykowicz-
Wierzbicka as a theoretical background. They argue that the consequences of
asymmetric shocks in a monetary union and macroeconomic stabilization mech-
anisms available to the Member States were at the heart of the EU’s recent eco-
nomic crisis, while the EU’s optimality as a currency area has been debated ever
since the decision to adopt the common currency was made in the early 1990s.
The evolution of the economic policy coordination system developed in the EU
4 A. Grimmel
to accompany the common currency is evaluated by the authors as a remedy
aimed to correct some of the EMU’s design flaws hindering its performance
(such as the conflict of supranational and national economic policy goals, the
moral hazard problem between the Member States, imperfections of disciplining
mechanisms and sanctions for non-compliance with economic policy coordin-
ation rules, ineffective crisis prevention mechanisms or crisis management tools,
etc.). In the concluding part of their chapter, Rapacki and Znoykowicz-
Wierzbicka consider challenges of integration process in the EU with special
regard for deepening integration as the core element of EMU reform strategy.
Based on the EMU experience to date, they discuss the prospects of a further
euro zone enlargement towards EU members from Central and Eastern Europe.
In Chapter 4, Juan Díez Medrano looks at the societal challenges that the
European integration project currently faces and that are seen to have long-term
and short-term origins. He argues that different national traditions, historical tra-
jectories and levels of economic development underlie traditional opposition
between supporters of a market-oriented and a political project for Europe,
and between proponents of a social Europe and proponents of a more liberal/
neoliberal Europe. The expansion of the EU from 15 to 28 members, as he con-
tinues to describe, has increased diversity in the EU and further reduced the pos-
sibility of reaching consensus on a basic constitution for Europe and on the EU’s
policies. Simultaneously, growing within-country economic inequalities and
exclusion, made worse by the 2008 financial and economic crisis, have alienated
the middle and lower classes of countries that had traditionally supported the
European integration project and propitiated the rise of populist anti-EU groups
of the right and the left. This is, Díez Medrano argues, because many of the
victims of growing exclusion have regarded EU neoliberal policies since
the mid-1990s as the main cause of their plight. He analyses and highlights how
the uneven pace of Europeanization of the EU states’ capitalist elites and of the
middle and lower classes limits the possibility of reducing diversity of outlook
with respect to the European integration project across the EU, contributes to the
hegemony of a EU neoliberal agenda, and thus erodes the European Union’s
legitimacy among its citizens.
Part II opens with a chapter by Jeremy Leaman, who offers a critical view on
the persistence of the financial turmoil in the EU. He critically assesses that
“Europe’s Great Crisis” (2008–2016) has had no significant salutary effects. The
non-recovery of the secular economy, the persistence of structural unemploy-
ment and under-investment, in his analysis, are matched by the paralysis of
macroeconomic policy and the absence of self-critical reflection within Europe’s
policy elites. In contrast to the rapid paradigm shift to ‘neoliberal’ supply-sidism
following the stagflationary crisis of the mid-1970s, in his view, the core institu-
tions of the EU and its major Member States and their mainstream academic
advisers remain stubbornly resistant to alternative diagnoses and prescriptions.
The chapter examines the institutional and ideological obstacles to change within
the EU, which arguably defy the evidence of policy failure. This includes a com-
parison of the rhetoric of order and control, invoked in the construction and
 Introduction 5
defence of Europe’s monetarist policy architecture, with the actual powerless-
ness of central banks: first, to prevent the privatization of money creation in the
process of global financialization before the Great Crisis; and second, the equally
evident ineffectiveness of both central banks and fiscal authorities to influence
the investment behaviour of banking and other corporations after 2008. Leaman
also examines the contrast between the ideological insistence on the efficiency
of the market-driven allocation of social resources and the extreme inefficiency
of sectoral ‘markets’ dominated by oligopolistic and monopolistic behaviour,
where rent-seeking frequently marginalizes innovative entrepreneurial activity.
Finally, he presents a set of heterodox ideas which re-emphasize the centrality of
public goods within a green political economy based on domestic and inter-
national solidarity.
In Chapter 6, Manuela Caiani engages in the contemporary political and
scholarly debate on social dissatisfaction and the corresponding political back-
lash. In this debate a particular focus of scholarly attention has been the support
expressed for (populist) radical right parties and movements, which has
increased rapidly over recent decades. Caiani shows that – although it may not
be cause for any comfort – it is increasingly the case that many citizens in
Western as well as Eastern and Central Europe lend their support to parties and
movements that promote xenophobia, ethno-nationalism and anti-system
populism. Her chapter addresses these issues by providing an overview of
the current right-wing parties in Europe and their electoral (and social) penetra-
tion, especially after the last EU elections and various national elections in which
the general trend has been confirmed. Second, it discusses the main causes (at
the macro, meso and micro level) that can explain the current success of the
extreme right, arguing that populism is among these. Third, it offers an empirical
focus on ‘populism’ as an ideology or rhetoric which matches the anti-elite sen-
timent that has become increasingly widespread among European citizens, espe-
cially in times of economic/immigration crisis. This third aspect will be
supported with a comparative case study based on two main extreme right parties
in Germany and Italy, showing the prominent role in their discourses of the
populistic appeal.
In Chapter 7, Henri de Waele looks at another phenomenon, namely inde-
pendence and separatist movements, which in many aspects seem to be related
to the rise of a new populism in Europe. He bases his study on the insight that,
over previous decades, the European Union has undergone a steady process of
widening and deepening, but has failed to prevent (and possibly even stimulated)
a simultaneous thriving of various independence and separatist movements.
Most prominently, he argues, these movements acquired visibility in the build-
up to the Scottish referendum in 2014 – yet both before and after, similar senti-
ments slumbered and proliferated across the continent. De Waele sets out not to
rehearse or duplicate positions already well expressed in the academic debate.
Rather, his objective is to build upon previous analyses, and to attempt to steer
the discourse in a slightly different direction. To that end, he focuses on the
implications of eventually successful pushes for separation and independence,
6 A. Grimmel
since these are believed to raise existential questions for both the seceding
region, the remaining ‘rump state’, as well as for the EU as a whole. But two of
the many contentious issues, he continues to argue, pertain to the collective dep-
rivation of citizens’ rights, and the amendments to Union law that would
urgently be required. As the chapter thus exposes, independence and separatist
movements actually appear to present a much more daunting political and insti-
tutional challenge to the integrity of the supranational edifice than has been
acknowledged thus far.
Chapter 8 by Marianne Takle aims to analyse to what extent and how
increased migration to Europe has triggered conflicting ideas of solidarity in
Europe. The chapter integrates analytical and normative approaches to the
concept of solidarity. As an analytical concept, it examines EU institutions’ idea
of solidarity according to four dimensions: the foundation or sources of solid-
arity, the goal of solidarity, the boundaries of solidarity and the strength of the
collective orientation. This analytical approach is used to examine how various
combinations give different forms of solidarity. As a normative concept, the
chapter analyses how appeals for solidarity are used to justify a certain policy,
something that is aimed at. Solidarity is discussed as a political obligation, and
delineated from moral, legal and ethical obligations. Empirically, the analysis is
mainly based on documents from two EU institutions, the European Commis-
sion and the Council of the European Union, but it also includes documents from
some EU Member States. Takle argues that the increased number of migrants
coming to Europe is obviously a crisis for the migrants who are travelling, but it
can barely be seen as a migration crisis in Europe. As the European countries
have resources to handle the number of migrants, the crisis in Europe is rather
related to the many different reactions. Moreover, the chapter argues that
whereas solidarity is a flexible concept that can be stretched in many directions,
it is stretched so far in this case that the EU institutions and some Member States
apply different ideas of solidarity. Takle emphasizes that solidarity is a political
concept, and solidarity must be given voluntarily. Solidarity depends on the
expectation of reciprocal obligations over time, and these obligations are closely
connected to a political community. In Europe, the chapter concludes, there are
different collective orientations both between countries and levels within the EU,
and there is not a lack of solidarity, but rather too many conflicting ideas of
solidarity.
In Chapter 9, Tim Oliver deals with the sword of Damocles of various
Member State dropout scenarios – such as Brexit, Grexit and others – that is
hanging over the EU. He approaches the topic by directly addressing the current
scholarly and political debates, and contending that European integration has
appeared to be a forward-moving process, with little analysis of how it could
move backwards or break down entirely. Oliver argues that this debate has now
come to the fore because of Brexit, the continued potential for Grexit, the growth
of authoritarian and populist movements across the EU, and doubts over the
USA’s commitment to Europe following Donald Trump’s election. By exploring
the various negotiations Brexit has unleashed in the UK, between the UK and
 Introduction 7
the EU, within the EU and beyond, the chapter explores how Brexit has raised
interconnected questions about the solidarity of the UK, the EU and the
wider West.
In Chapter 10, Monika Eigmüller seeks an answer to the question whether a
‘social Europe’ will be the result of an integration process that, thus far, is
heavily based on principles of the free market and territoriality. The starting
point of her study is the fact that the process of European integration has not
only considerably changed the political, judicial and economic order of the
Member States, but has also significantly modified the configuration of the Euro-
pean welfare states. She identifies two decisive processes which remove barriers
that, in former times, were essential features of organizing national welfare state
regimes. With regard to the provision of certain social goods, the national terri-
torial principle is being overridden by EU citizens who can now request distinct
social services outside the Member State of residence. Simultaneously, the pool
of individuals entitled to social benefits extends beyond former national borders
both financially and legally. Up until now, this process was mainly driven by the
ruling of the European Court of Justice, Eigmüller finds, whereas the European
Commission is still not entitled to develop a positive concept of a common Euro-
pean social policy. As a result, she argues, European social policy has diluted the
long-established relationship between social citizenship and the nation-state
without establishing a new bond connecting European citizens within the new
territorial frame. This process of de- and re-territorialization of social policy
within the EU is described and discussed by Eigmüller alongside the main chal-
lenges for the future of a genuine European social policy in the face of the
present crisis-driven rhetoric and reawakened national egoisms.
Part III opens with a chapter in which I aim to shed light on the multidimen-
sionality of crises under conditions of functional differentiation. It is argued that
every crisis creates distinct challenges to politics, economics and law, and that
these crises have to be answered by way of applying, refining and further devel-
oping rules and concepts that are essentially dependent on these contexts of
action. Based on this, the chapter will trace how the interest paradigm as repre-
senting a specific form of rationalization has gained influence in the course of
integration. It will be shown that this paradigm has its roots in the momentous
decision to further the European project step by step on the back of economic
and political interests instead of founding it on a comprehensive constitutional
framework. Based on this diagnosis, it is maintained that even if this form of
interest-based rationalization is widely acknowledged to be the driving force –
or ‘the motor’ – behind the integration process, it is not only inadequate to cope
with the issues that are underlying crises, but it may also be seen as a crucial part
of the problem. The reason for this is mainly identified in the fact that the nature
of crisis – generally constituting a no-win situation – conflicts with such an
interest-driven mode of integration, and makes it hardly possible to find appro-
priate solutions. Politics, economics and law, it is further argued, have different
potentials to arrive at more promising ways of crisis management, but not all of
them are equally viable under conditions of functional differentiation. The
8 A. Grimmel
chapter concludes with laying out the implications of this analysis, and by sug-
gesting a rethink of the ‘motor of the integration process’.
In Chapter 12, Ramona Coman scrutinizes the most recent evolutions of the
EU’s modes of governance since the entry into force of the Maastricht Treaty.
The focus of her study lies in the examination of the resilience of the EU’s
modes of governance in the light of new conceptualizations in EU studies: the
new intergovernmentalism and the new supranationalism. While the first section
looks at the intergovernmental method, the second section deals with the
community method, and the final section examines the open method of coordin-
ation (OMC) and the European Semester, which is the instrument designed at
the onset of the Eurozone crisis for the coordination of macroeconomic policies.
The contribution shows that EU policy-making has witnessed several transfor-
mations since the 1990s and that the intensity of change has been fuelled by the
Eurozone crisis, which put the decision-making process under considerable
strain. In 2010, when it was unclear how to respond appropriately to the prob-
lems of the Eurozone both in terms of process and solutions, Coman argues, EU
institutional actors reacted rapidly to reassure the markets and to save the euro.
The decisions taken between 2010 and 2012 altered prevailing modes of govern-
ance as the crisis forced the EU to adjust the decision-making process. At the
onset of the Eurozone crisis the intergovernmental methods prevailed; as soon as
the crisis entered its “slow-burning phase”, supranational institutions and actors
regained power and visibility in the decision-making process. The overarching
aim of Coman’s contribution is to capture incremental changes in the power
relations between the European Commission, the European Parliament, the
Council and the European Council, and to show how they have remodelled pre-
existing modes of governance. The chapter illustrates the “adaptability and resili-
ence” of EU policy-making in the face of new challenges; that is, the ability of
EU institutions to adapt to incremental change and sudden disruptions. In doing
so, it scrutinizes institutional empowerment in EU decision-making both de jure
and de facto. On the one hand, EU institutional actors are granted new attribu-
tions in the formulation, decision-making and implementation of EU public
policies and, on the other, they perform new functions through their dynamic
interactions.
The aims of the integration project are the subject of Chapter 13 by Christo-
pher Lord. He departs from the diagnosis that the original European Com-
munities famously aimed at a uniform acquis communautaire; in other words, at
a uniform body of policy and law that would more or less apply to all Member
States in the same way, at the same time. The idea of a uniform acquis, he
argues, minimized opportunities for free-riding and cherry-picking, but also
implied that a single body of rights and obligations would follow on from mem-
bership of the European Union. Above all, he continues, it seemed to be the cor-
ollary of treating integration as an end in itself that could best be achieved by
converging on a uniform legal order within a single polity and political com-
munity. Lord agrees that the Union has long substituted multiple forms of differ-
entiated integration for a uniform acquis communautaire, but he also emphasizes
 Introduction 9
that, until recently, many assumed that those differences would be mainly ones
of speed. A uniform acquis communautaire would still be the long-term goal and
outcome of the Union, if not its present reality. The crisis has, however, made it
more likely that the Union will be permanently divided into different segments,
he argues. Moreover, he considers it likely that those segments will not only be
defined by differences in the participation of different states in different policies.
Rather, they will probably be defined by differences in the forms of political
authority exercised by the Union, and by differences in understandings of the
Union itself as a form of political association or community. Lord argues that the
Union should respond to the challenge of segmentation by developing as a ‘club
of clubs’. However, he claims, a ‘club of clubs’ will need its own standards of
justice and democracy that go beyond the instrumental understanding of the
concept as it has been developed in the public choice literature.
Chapter 14 by Erik Oddvar Eriksen deals with political innovations beyond
the state and, more concretely, with the EU’s interdependency in international
affairs. The chapter asks whether transnational democracy is possible when there
is no overarching legal entity with the capacity to coerce. In Europe we are wit-
nessing the development of several political innovations, as Eriksen points out,
which signify a new constellation of multilevel rule. He states that innovations
like constitutional fusion, shared sovereignty, stateless government, parlia-
mentary interweaving and layered public sphere have democratic value. Against
this backdrop, he argues that the defining characteristics of Europe’s political
order are not sovereignty and independence but co-membership and codetermi-
nation. Sovereignty is pooled and bounded, and decision-making power is shared
between national and European levels. Eriksen concludes that this fact amounts
to a specialized form of democracy for identifying and deterring dominance
stemming from complex interdependence among states. From his perspective,
not a European federal state but a supranational democratic union is the proper
response to the many challenges confronting the European Union.
The EU’s model of regional integration in a functionally differentiated world
society is the subject of Chapter 15 by Poul F. Kjaer. The chapter argues that the
starting point for improving Europe’s problem-solving capacities is to under-
stand its location and broader societal function. In the analysis of the author, the
EU is located ‘in-between’ European nation-states and global governance
regimes. Both the emergence and the further evolution of the integration project
were intrinsically connected to the substantial reconfiguration of the relationship
between Europe and the rest of world which unfolded from the time of World
War II and the decolonization process and beyond. As such, Kjaer explores the
concept that the EU serves as an interface between the Member States and the
rest of the world. He sees this also reflected in its hybrid institutional architec-
ture which combines elements characteristic of states with elements which are
central to global governance regimes. He identifies the core element of this
hybridity in the way the EU combines territorial and functionally differentiated
dimensions of society insofar as the EU, simultaneously, is a territorial deline-
ated unit and a conglomerate of functional regimes.
10 A. Grimmel
The volume closes with an outlook by the editor on the EU’s prospects for
tackling the current crisis-laden situation. It is suggested that challenges should
not only be perceived as symptoms for certain shortcomings, but also always
containing an inherent chance: the chance to understand what goes wrong, to
identify what brought us there, and to reflect about what can be done. This, of
course, may be seen as a rather optimistic twist of the volume’s topic; one that
might even be considered to disregard the critical situation in which the EU cur-
rently finds itself. A brief look into the history, however, shows that crises have
often served as catalyst for furthering European integration – and there are good
reasons why they might continue to do so. Even though the underlying mech-
anism is not an automatic one (if it is a mechanism at all), and past experiences
are certainly not directly transferable to the conditions today, it reveals that the
EU has the potential to react to upcoming issues in a way that goes beyond its
already established problem-solving patterns and its single Member States’ inter-
ests. At the same time, to seize this very potential may prove to be the most
crucial part in coping with the challenge of Europe.