Correction to: The Palgrave Handbook of EU Crises

Crisis and EU Foreign and Security Policy: An Introduction

This chapter sums up the main findings in the four papers discussing the impact of various external crises on the development of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, the CFSP. Chapters discuss the EU’s foreign and security policy responses to the Russian annexation of Crimea and the ongoing war in Ukraine, the EU’s crisis management capacities, and the impact of crises on EU–US relations. Despite member states’ traditional reluctance to integrate further in this domain of EU policy, the CFSP is not breaking down. Instead, all the chapters suggest that the EU is able to cope with crises and that overall, crises and increased uncertainty have led to a strengthening of the CFSP mainly …

Crisis, Continuity, and Change in European Union Institutions: An Introduction

This section offers an overview of how EU institutions have been affected by crises and how they have coped with them. The section finds that EU institutions have responded to polycrisis mainly by “muddling through” based on familiar ways of governing and by introducing incremental changes, and in some cases, also heading forward with new institutional arrangements or structures. The section hardly finds evidence of institutional breakdown or even of minor reductions in the role of EU institutions—either vis-a-vis other EU institutions or vis-a-vis member state institutions. To the contrary—the EU institutions have proven to be resilient and able to deal with crises by drawing on their alre…

European Union Crisis: An Introduction

What is the impact of crisis on European Union (EU) integration? This chapter unpacks the concept of crisis and ways to conceptualize it. We outline three conceptual scenarios on the EU’s putative response to crisis and subsequently apply them in all chapters of the volume. The chapter sums up the key findings from different parts of the Handbook on the impact of crisis on EU policies and institutions, as well as the applicability of existing theories. The volume finds overall that the EU has been surprisingly resilient in the face of crises due to its ability to adapt and absorb, and if necessary, change, in response to crisis. The chapter also discusses the EU’s responses to democratic ch…

Integrating nascent organisations. On the settlement of the European External Action Service

This study shows how the EU’s new Common Foreign and Security policy (CFSP) administration – the European External Action Service (EEAS) – experienced early organisational settlement. We find that the EEAS acts relatively independently from member-state governments, suggesting administrative autonomy. It is also relatively integrated into the Commission structure, suggesting inter-institutional integration of sub-units in the two institutions. Important lessons can be learned. For organisation theory: Firstly, nascent organisations are likely to experience some degree of ‘settlement’ after birth by establishing ties towards organisations from which they originate. Secondly, settlement is in…

Theoretical Approaches to Crisis: An Introduction

This chapter sums up the key arguments made in this section of the Handbook. The nine chapters discuss essential EU integration and International Relations approaches and how they study, understand, and explain crisis’ putative impact on the EU: Liberal Intergovernmentalism, Classical Realism, Neo-realism, Neofunctionalism, Institutionalism, Organizational Theory, Cleavage Theory, Social constructivism, and Deliberative Theory. For this purpose, each chapter sets out the theory’s basic assumptions before addressing the following questions: (1) How does each theoretical perspective expect crisis to influence EU institutions and policies? What are the causal mechanisms to account for continui…

The Legitimacy Crisis: An Introduction

This section examines how the crisis of democratic legitimacy shapes the prospects for further integration. All the authors find evidence for ‘muddling through’ by the EU in response to its legitimacy crisis. Raube and Costa Reis show how the Commission and European Parliament took incremental steps of starting infringement proceedings against Hungary and Poland in response to breaches in the rule of law by elected populist governments, yet partisanship undermined the EU’s response. Holst and Molander discuss the democratic pitfalls of technocratic decision-making in response to crisis and detail the kinds of reforms needed to enhance accountability and citizen nonexpert participation in po…

Brexit: An Introduction

This section examines the consequences of the United Kingdom (UK)’s decision to leave the EU. Though chapters acknowledge that most will depend on the outcome of the UK–EU negotiations as Brexit will be an unpredictable case of differentiated disintegration. This section offers contributions that aim at stimulating the debate on how Brexit might be understood and analyzed. Will Brexit cause breakdown, heading forward or merely continuous muddling through? The case of Brexit serves as a research laboratory in which we can test existing theories of European integration. Are they able to explain patterns of disintegration equally to integration, or do we need new theoretical and conceptual too…

The Financial Crisis: An Introduction

This section discusses the origins of the Eurozone crisis in European Monetary Union before discussing various dimensions of how the Eurozone coped, its impact on integration, and the crisis’ implications for the future of the EU. While the authors all show that the EU’s response to the financial crisis reflected the scenario ‘muddling through,’ they have different perspectives on the future of integration post crisis. Rosen and Olsen point out that the austerity policies implemented after crisis resulted in collective protest movements across Europe. Tranoy and Stenstad highlight the failure of financial sector reforms to reset the social role of finance in a more equitable way. Caporaso a…

The Commission’s informal agenda-setting in the CFSP. Agenda leadership, coalition-building, and community framing

This study contributes to the literature on informal governance by examining politics of informal agenda-setting in the European Commission. As a ‘hard case’, the paper examines how the European Commission exceeds limited legal Treaty provisions in foreign and security policy (CFSP). This system, where the Commission has come to play a more prominent role than stipulated in the treaties, is interpreted as a normalization of CFSP governance. Three complementary propositions on the informal agenda-setting role of the Commission are developed: agenda leadership (#1), coalition-building (#2), and community framing (#3). To illuminate these propositions, we examine their relevance across three e…

The Migration Crisis: An Introduction

In 2015, the EU and its member states struggled to coordinate, communicate, and cooperate on the migration crisis as the chapters in this section show. Schilde and Wallace Goodman point out that while border security contains examples of deeper integration, asylum management policy has followed the scenarios of breaking down and muddling through. All the authors highlight the Dublin convention as particularly ill-devised and thus paving the way for the refugee crisis. Bosilca finds evidence for breaking down in addition to minimal reforms of border security policy that constitute muddling through. Crawford argues that the migration crisis provides evidence both of muddling through and headi…