Coping with Crisis: Europe’s Challenges and Strategies

How has the economic and financial crisis that started in 2007 affected European integration? Observers have been speculating about whether the crisis will ultimately lead to a strengthening or weakening of the European Union. This book studies the effects of the crisis on EU policy-making and institutional arrangements on one hand, and citizens’ EU attitudes and political parties’ electoral strategies on the other. It concludes that, at least in the short run, the crisis has overall created an opportunity for European integration rather than an obstacle. First, it has triggered events of proposed and actual far-reaching policy and institutional change. Second, negative effects on public opinion have not (yet) systematically translated into tendencies of stagnation or disintegration. The book brings together established scholars of European integration whose diverse research expertise contributes to an improved theoretical and empirical understanding of how the economic and financial crisis has affected EU policies, institutions and citizens.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Integration.

Contents:
1. The EU in Crisis: Advancing the Debate
2. The Unexpected Winner of the Crisis: The European Commission’s Strengthened Role in Economic Governance
3. The Impact of the Euro Crisis on Citizens’ Support for the European Union
4. ‘We No Longer Love You, But We Don’t Want To Leave You’: The Eurozone Crisis and Popular Euroscepticism in Greece
5. Politicizing Europe in Hard Times: Conflicts over Europe in France in a Long-term Perspective, 1974–2012
6. ‘Beggars can’t be Choosers’: The European Crisis and Chinese Direct Investment in the European Union
7. Crisis and Citizens’ Trust in the European Central Bank — Panel Data Evidence for the Euro Area, 1999–2012
8. European Integration in the Euro Crisis: The Limits of Postfunctionalism