The Crisis Of The European Union: Challenges, Analyses, Solutions

Description

The European integration project currently faces profound political, economic, legal, and societal challenges. These challenges seem increasingly to overburden the European Union as well as the cohesion among the Member States, and therefore pose a serious threat to the integration project. The EU faces a major task in coping with this situation and it is one that calls for new approaches and ideas. This book addresses the major challenges confronting the EU, analyses the consequences for the integration project, and develops fresh perspectives on the EU’s future prospects for coping with the most debated, current and upcoming issues, such as the rise of Euroscepticism or the contested idea of an ‘ever-closer union’. Renowned experts in European Studies from the fields of political science, law, economics and sociology provide an interdisciplinary perspective on the different dimensions of the EU’s crisis-laden situation and question whether the EU’s existing problem-solving mechanisms and methods are sufficient to address the imminent tasks. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of EU Politics, European Politics, European Governance, and more broadly European law, history and the wider social sciences. Cover......Page 1 Half Title......Page 2 Title Page......Page 4 Copyright Page......Page 5 Table of Contents......Page 6 List of figures......Page 9 List of tables......Page 10 List of contributors......Page 11 Preface......Page 13 Introduction: the many challenges of the European Union......Page 14 Part I Perspectives on a troubled project......Page 24 1 Understanding European Union governance: political challenges of the integration project......Page 26 2 Europe’s unfinished community of law: legal challenges of the integration project......Page 39 3 The design of the EMU at the heart of the EU’s crisis? Economic challenges of the integration project......Page 54 4 Uneven development, partial Europeanization and nationalist retreat: societal challenges of the integration project......Page 68 Part II The many faces of the European Crisis......Page 82 5 The hegemony of disorder: the persistence of financial turmoil in the EU......Page 84 6 Nationalism, populism and the rebirth of statehood in Europe......Page 104 7 Independence and separatist movements: Europe between integration and disintegration......Page 117 8 Is the migration crisis a solidarity crisis?......Page 129 9 A Europe of dropouts? Brexit and the question of European solidarity......Page 142 10 Social Europe still missing? Flaws of the spill-over process as the motor of integration......Page 154 Part III How to improve the EU’s problem-solving capacities......Page 170 11 When there are no winners, only losers: the European crisis and the interest paradigm......Page 172 12 Intergovernmental method, community method and open method of coordination: the resilience, efficiency and legitimacy of the EU’s modes of governance......Page 186 13 Segmentation, differentiation and the aims of European integration......Page 198 14 Democratic innovations beyond the state......Page 212 15 The EU’s model of regional integration in a functionally differentiated world society......Page 228 Epilogue: there’s life in the old dog yet! Challenges as catalyst for European integration......Page 239 Bibliography......Page 249 Index......Page 282