Europe's Union in Crisis
Tested and Contested
West European Politics Series

The European Union faces a set of inter-related crises that it struggles to contain and address. By exploring how the EU responds to crises and conflict, this volume addresses both its resilience and vulnerability. The EU faces significant challenges: European integration is increasingly politicised; democratic politics within member states are increasingly volatile; challenger parties threaten the status quo; and party systems are shifting throughout Europe. These crises test both the EU and individual states, especially those that had to exchange interdependence in the Union for dependence on the Troika. Despite the tension of hard times, this volume points to patterns of continuity and change as the single market, somewhat side-lined and forgotten in the heat of crises, retains its role as the hard core of the Union and the EU?s most significant achievement.

This book was originally published as a special issue of West European Politics.

1. Europe’s union in crisis: tested and contested 2. Politicisation and integration through law: whither integration theory? 3. The EU’s problem-solving capacity and legitimacy in a crisis context: a virtuous or vicious circle? 4. Fleeing the centre: the rise of challenger parties in the aftermath of the euro crisis 5. After the Spitzenkandidaten: fundamental change in the EU’s political system? 6. The Commission: boxed in and constrained, but still an engine of integration 7. Reinterpreting the rules ‘by stealth’ in times of crisis: a discursive institutionalist analysis of the European Central Bank and the European Commission 8. Europe’s crises and the EU’s ‘big three’ 9. EU experimentalist governance in times of crisis 10. Why the single market remains the EU’s core business

Brigid Laffan is Director and Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute (EUI), Florence. She has published widely on European Integration including Core-periphery Relations in the European Union (London: Routledge, 2016), Ireland and the European Union (2008), Renovation or Revolution: new territorial politics in Ireland and the United Kingdom, (2005), Europe's Experimental Union. Re thinking Integration (1999) and The Finances of the Union (1997).