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Since the global financial crisis central banks expanded their roles and responsibilities and their impact on the economy and society grew significantly. Thus, during the euro-area crisis, the European Central Bank (ECB) engaged in decisions with profound human and societal implications while turning a blind eye towards them. The Bank's dismissive approach is remarkable given EU institutions duty to respect fundamental rights, and EU's identity as a human rights protector. Building on literature and interviews with ECB officials, this work suggests that organizational cultural features, i.e. mainstream economic thinking and narrow mandate interpretation steered the Bank towards overlooking the impact of its policies on EU citizens' rights. While much has been written about central banks and organizational culture, the two spheres have rarely been connected in research. This research addresses the intersection between the two and calls for broader perspective to consider a wider range of factors influencing economic policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the sovereign debt crisis, scholars concluded that euro area member states (EAMS) and non-EAMS embarked on diverging paths of integration. Yet, their united response countering the economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis contradicts the path-dependency argument. This article takes an ideational approach. It demonstrates that the different crisis outcomes regarding differentiated integration (DI) in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) coincide with variations of how DI influenced elite crisis perceptions as an idea. While policymakers perceived the sovereign debt crisis as a currency area crisis with threats and spillovers applying to EAMS, they interpreted the COVID-19 crisis as a health emergency threatening all EU member states. These differences in elite crisis perceptions facilitated different outcomes regarding DI despite unchanged economic and fiscal circumstances among EAMS and non-EAMS. The findings challenge deterministic assumptions on the self-reinforcing nature of DI in EMU and establish DI as an idea structuring elite perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a discussion of main channels through which fiscal stability can contribute to financial stability, the current legal governance framework of the euro area and the experience gained in its application are assessed with the aim to offer an answer to the question alluded to in the title, namely whether the EU's fiscal architecture, namely the current EMU legal framework on economic policy coordination, provides a meaningful contribution to financial stability. Moreover, the potential of this framework to accommodate future measures to enhance fiscal stability is briefly assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the Banking Union from an economic-constitutional perspective. It argues that the areas covered by the Banking Union fall substantively mainly under the internal market area of EU law, where the microeconomic efficiency-based rationales and objectives are essential in legal assessments. In contrast, the euro area macroeconomic and stability-oriented rationales guided the decision on the Banking Union and the allocation of banking supervision to the ECB. The article claims that these different constitutional rationales, and the constitutional locus of the Banking Union, could have implications for the broader constitutional architecture and even for the EU legal order. Indeed, the microeconomic part of the EU economic-constitutional model suits legal approach to integration, but the macroeconomic rationales have a more problematic relation with law and courts. This could call for a resurgence of the internal market perspective in Banking Union going forward to remedy some of the constitutional concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of the Banking Union (BU) has been a significant leap towards further integration in the euro area. BU cooperation is critical for efficient supervisory and resolution actions, even more so for cross-border banks that may face legal and institutional differentiation. Cooperation takes place within the two BU pillars – the Single Supervisory Mechanism and the Single Resolution Mechanism – and together with authorities of non-participating Member States and of third countries in a cross-border setting. The Article examines how the two mechanisms dealt with Failing or Likely to Fail (FOLTF) and resolution cases from 2017 until early 2022. FOLTF cases have tested existing cooperation frameworks and prompted new cooperation vehicles and mechanisms within the BU, in its immediate EU periphery and with third countries. Cooperation is a prerequisite of functioning mechanisms; it lays the foundations for further integration within the BU; and helps consolidating equivalence with third countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accomplishment of the Banking Union's common supervisory culture or the implementation of consistent supervisory practices and standards across participating Member States, critically depends on the cooperation of national competent authorities throughout the supervisory process, which takes place primarily in Joint Supervisory Teams (JSTs). Because of their mixed, multilevel composition, JSTs allow the cross-comparison of varying national supervisory approaches and facilitate the identification of best practices as building blocks of a shared supervisory outlook on prudential concerns. This paper unpacks the 'black box' of JSTs through the lens of experimentalist governance and with a qualitative examination of data from various sources, including semi-structured interviews with JST-participants. It reveals the importance of NCAs in JSTs experimentalist practice as well as of soft governance tools in fostering a sense of community and highlights specific operational challenges in close cooperation that limit the reach of the common supervisory culture beyond the euro area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a major economic crisis worldwide. The monetary policy response of the European Central Bank (ECB) was fast and massive. The ECB also intervened on the supervisory side because, after the establishment of Banking Union, the ECB was given responsibility for banking supervision in the euro area through the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM). This paper explains the response of the ECB-SSM to the COVID-19 related economic crisis during 2020 and 2021, up until February 2022. These ECB actions include the reduction of bank capital buffers, the redefinition of non-performing loans, and the limitations on dividends and bonuses paid by banks. We adopt a neofunctionalist approach, which suggests that policies are developed at the EU level in response to need, whereby supranational actors and spillovers are particularly important. We offer some concluding insights into whether the ECB-SSM's responses have led to a further deepening of integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on the Economic and Monetary Union has expanded substantially in the last decade, especially in the aftermath of the Eurozone crisis. Important gaps remain, though. Three new books advance new insights both theoretically and empirically. Employing qualitative and quantitative methods, these books study aspects of decision-making during the negotiations of the latest reforms, their consequential institutional design and the oversight interactions between EU institutions. The findings of the books demonstrate how the institutional complexity and weaknesses of this policy field influence the functioning and democratic legitimacy of EU institutions. As a remark, they contribute to the ongoing debate on further reforms in order to increase fairness among and within the EU institutions and the member states, encourage responsiveness and improve political and judicial accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on EU-related politicization has advanced in the empirical measurement of controversy within and between political arenas, but continues to debate the impacts of political contestation on policy-making on a theoretical level. While postfunctionalism predicts a 'constraining dissensus', empirical accounts present mixed evidence, suggesting the ability of executives to avoid or circumvent such political constraints. The article harnesses discursive institutionalism (DI) to revise postfunctionalist theory, arguing that the resulting theoretical model – labelled discursive postfunctionalism – better specifies the triggers, transmission, and eventual effects of politicization. A key element is to highlight the role of 'interfaces': those institutional venues, political agents, and acts of discursive framing that either establish a linkage between or shield supranational decision-making from public controversy at the domestic level. The article presents a sequential model of discursive postfunctionalism and illustrates its analytical potential with reference to three empirical examples: the Eurozone crisis, the EU-Canada trade agreement, and Brexit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the pooling of authority among the member states of the euro area has intensified, expanding the remit of the Council, Commission and ECB. While it is commonly thought that large states dominate these institutions, a growing literature emphasizes the ability of small states to pursue their interests too. We explore whether the empowerment of euro area institutions was associated with relative net gains for small member states over large ones, and with relative losses during the euro crisis. We estimate the relationship between the relative amount of resources of different institutions, and the distribution of gains among members, throughout 1999–2016. We find that empowering the Council, the Commission or the ECB provides relative gains to small member states, although not against Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have written much about what national parliaments can, should and actually do in European Union (EU) governance. What they have largely disregarded so far is the actors' perspective. Which roles do national members of parliament (MPs) themselves view as a priority and how do they assess their performance? Which factors may structure observed variation? From a strategic perspective on legislative behavior, the article conceptualizes five roles for national MPs in EU politics: Scrutinizers, Subsidiarity Watchdogs, Networkers, Communicators and Transposers. It draws on plenary debates on the Constitutional Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty and the Eurozone crisis as well as data from 66 interviews with MPs from Austria, Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom. There is a clear focus on scrutiny in EU affairs and communication to citizens. Ideological conviction and debate topics structure patterns in emphasis and assessment of these roles, while government-opposition dynamics and parliamentary strength only partially do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the impact of the Eurozone crisis on the foreign policies of Greece and Portugal from a de-Europeanization perspective. These two Southern European countries were significantly Europeanized in the past and both suffered greatly from the Euro crisis. Focusing on the Troika period and on relations with China, the article shows that both Greece and Portugal's foreign policies towards Beijing went through an important degree of de-Europeanization during the Eurozone crisis. Such effect was, however, more intense and durable in the case of Greece, much driven by domestic politics. These national factors were intimately connected with exogenous drivers, such as EU-level developments and Beijing's agency, both more relevant for illuminating the case of Portugal. Ultimately, the Eurozone crisis strengthened the influence of external actors like China over EU foreign policy-making, working as a complementary driver of de-Europeanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The representation of EU debates in the mass media has received comparatively little attention in studies on Euroscepticism, despite criticism on the EU having become mainstream since the early 1990s in particular. Recently, a number of salient crises have brought European politics to the fore like never before. This article presents an analysis of different types of criticism on and opposition towards the EU as present in media at the height of the Eurozone crisis in 2012. Using a four-fold typology, it looks at views about the EU and its policies as present in coverage by quality newspapers in Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands. An analysis of 1,085 claims from 454 articles shows that, rather than rejecting integration or EU involvement in certain policies, criticism was predominantly aimed at existing policies and on presenting different policy options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Central Bank (ECB) emerged from the sovereign debt crisis as one of the most powerful supranational institutions. Against this background, this article explains how and why the ECB became empowered during the euro area crisis. Building on the delegation, governor's dilemma, and epistemic community approaches, we argue that the ECB ability to play a strong role in this empowerment process and to convince member states to entrust it with more competences was the outcome of a combination of three factors: limited cohesiveness within the collective principal (Eurogroup); a fiduciary relationship characterized by broad discretion and independence on the trustee side (ECB); and strong specialization with the ECB acting as epistemic entrepreneur. We illustrate our argument with two cases: the Trichet letters exemplify an autonomous emergency empowerment and the introduction of the single supervisory mechanism demonstrates ECB influence on institutional design decisions in negotiating processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to analyse whether, why and with which consequences courts support or on the contrary oppose decisions taken by non-majoritarian institutions and governments, and hence constrain or, on the contrary, enhance the integration process in times of crises. Focusing on judicial decisions on the subject of the European Central Bank's (ECB) monetary policy by the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) and the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) during the Euro area and the Covid-19 crises, the article shows that during the Euro area crisis, the European judicial system had an enhancing effect on the ECB's monetary policy; on the contrary, it has had a constraining effect during the Covid-19 crisis. Four different institutionalist explanations are put forward, relating to: the severity of the crisis; the timing of the judgments; the legal framing of the judgments; the functioning of the judicial system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After initial responses that appeared to be a disappointing replay of previous crises, EU governance in the Covid-19 crisis may very well result in paradigmatic change toward deeper European integration in some areas, incremental change in others, or even reversal toward dis-integration in yet others. It is therefore important to evaluate what changed in terms of policies and who governed in what ways during the pandemic. This concluding article does so by building on the other articles in this SI. It first sheds light on policy change during the crisis using a historical institutionalist framework, then on governance by asking which EU actors, intergovernmental or supranational, drove integration and how, using rational choice and discursive institutionalist frameworks. Finally, it also considers the effects of post-functionalist politicization to elucidate the more positive dynamics of interaction among EU actors during the pandemic, in contrast to the Eurozone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the extent to which the Covid-19 pandemic crisis represents a window of opportunity towards fundamental change in the economic governance of the European Union (EU). Adopting a historical institutionalist (HI) perspective and drawing insights from the policy learning literature, we argue that contingent learning immediately took place and policy entrepreneurs took important decisions recognising the new crisis as an existential threat for the EU. Further, the pandemic crisis support fund and the ECB pandemic emergency purchase programme represent instances of single loop learning that leave the fundamentals of economic governance untouched. However, and in contrast to the Euro area crisis response, the adoption of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) represents a bold decision and suggests double-loop learning. It is argued that the Covid-19 crisis is a critical juncture for the EU. As a result, EU economic governance ceases to be limited to its regulatory function and is now complemented by a redistributive function as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Euro crisis has produced a plethora of new institutions, policies, and projects to reform the Euro Area. This paper offers a theoretical and empirical contribution in the study of the New Economic Governance. By building on insights from classical Neofunctionalism and Liberal Intergovernmentalism, the paper revisits the static component of Philippe Schmitter's 'Neo-Neofunctionalist' framework. Static Neo-Neofunctionalism is then applied as a means to provide a systemic interpretation of crisis-led integration in the Euro crisis. The large majority of episodes of crisis-led integration in the 2011–2016 years is included in the analysis. In assessing Neo-Neofunctionalist expectations on the New Economic Governance, the paper matches analysis of legal documents with the results of a dedicated Expert Survey on the EMU governance fielded in October 2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Eurozone crisis is among recent developments that upset the European Union (EU) most profoundly. It deprived large parts of the population of their previous standard of living, put the rationality of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) into doubt and sparked unprecedented contestation. This article adopts a discursive notion of politicisation and the frame of Discursive Political Studies to investigate whether that moment of contestation re-politicised EU economic governance in substantive terms. It argues that, while emerging counter-narratives of crisis projected alternative scenarios of economic integration and established a practice of constructive EU critique, they were co-opted by the dominant mass-mediated story of a public debt crisis. This is shown in a combined content, network and discourse analysis of crisis narratives, which were issued by leading EU representatives, anti-austerity parties and European media between 2010 and 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is undisputed that the Eurozone crisis has contributed to the politicization of European integration, the longer-term impact of this politicization on the structure of political conflict in Europe remains unclear. This article engages with research findings which argue that the crisis has contributed to a shift of political cleavages in Europe, from an economic (left vs. right) to a transnational (pro- vs. anti-EU) divide. We examine whether there is any evidence of such a shift in parliamentary debates about the crisis in four Eurozone states (Germany, Austria, Spain and Ireland) between 2009 and 2014. We use a combination of content and cluster analysis to identify the discursive frames that parliamentarians employed to make sense of the crisis, and then assess which factors affected how these frames were used. Our findings show that the economic (left-right) cleavage remained highly influential in shaping the four parliaments' crisis discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of expectations to the contrary, Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) did not serve as a leaven for political union during the euro's second decade. Reforms to Euro Area governance enacted in this period, though significant, stopped well short of the degree of economic and political integration associated with this project. EU policy-makers nonetheless showed a new willingness to talk about political union, albeit in ways that stretched the meaning of this previously taboo term. Such talk, which was driven by financial market pressure and political positioning between member states at the height of the Euro Crisis, had limited bearing on Euro Area governance. But it may have been a factor in the United Kingdom's referendum vote to leave the EU. A lesson for EU policy-makers is that they should use the term political union more sparingly if at all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EMU structural asymmetries contributed directly to both procyclical debt-fuelled growth pre-crisis and sharply recessionary adjustment post-crisis. Greece's fiscal and debt crisis represented an 'orthodox' national failure inside EMU, yet the underlying reason for the Euro-Area financial crisis was external imbalances generated by EMU asymmetries. Exclusive reliance on internal devaluation, lack of a Euro-Area countercyclical response, and financial fragmentation, all accentuated the cost of asymmetric adjustment to crisis. The asymmetric EMU institutional framework also necessitated a greater reliance on intergovernmental activism to engineer ad hoc interventions, at the expense of both the Community method and democratic procedure. Financial markets mispriced sovereign risk, failing to counterbalance EMU asymmetries. The Greek crisis prompted the Euro Area to develop stronger policies and institutions and to eschew an extreme existential challenge. EMU is stronger at 20, yet with persisting asymmetries, old and new, and insufficiently equipped to face the next major crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution looks at asymmetries in terms of French and German influence on EMU's governance reforms during the two decades since the start of EMU in 1999. Drawing on the literature dealing with the sources of power and influence in EU decision-making, this contribution investigates key moments of the evolution and reform of EMU – the establishment and reform of fiscal rules, the creation of fiscal instruments and institutions of risk mutualizing including risk sharing pillars of the Bank Union. It makes a contribution to the literature by providing an account of the asymmetry of German and French influence and power in EMU governance reforms and, most importantly, their variations over time. Furthermore, it contributes to our understanding of the lasting nature of asymmetry in EMU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the democratic legitimacy of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) since the international financial crisis hit the euro area. From its inception, EMU has been marked by an asymmetry as its monetary pillar relied on output legitimacy while its economic pillar relied essentially on input legitimacy at the national level. The crisis severely challenged EMU's output legitimacy, which led to the establishment of new European-level institutions. We analyse the European Stability Mechanism, the European Semester, and Banking Union to take stock of their powers and the ways that these are balanced by mechanisms of legitimacy. Our main finding is that the intergovernmental and output-oriented approach that originally informed the legitimacy of EMU has remained prevalent after the crisis. However, as the three domains – in varying degrees – address questions that are essentially political, we argue that the channels for input legitimacy at the European level remain deficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution discusses the two main asymmetries of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) as they developed over the past two decades since the launch of the Single Currency. From the outset, EMU involved asymmetric degrees of integration in the area of 'economic' union (less centralised governance) versus 'monetary' union (more supranational governance). With the outbreak of the Sovereign Debt Crisis in 2010, the regime-shaping relevance of a second asymmetry emerged: one roughly between the member states of the Euro Area 'core' and those in the 'periphery'. Each of the two asymmetries have created a range of challenges — institutional, policy and political — that undermine the stability and sustainability of the EMU project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution combines neo-functionalism and historical institutionalism to understand the implications of differentiated integration in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and Banking Union (BU) for the single market in financial services in the European Union (EU). From the 1980s, the relaunch of the Single Market and monetary integration in the EU were presented by the supporters of EMU as mutually reinforcing, as in the logic of the Commission's Report 'One Market, One Money'. Initially, EMU appeared to reinforce financial integration, especially in the Euro Area banking sector, even though EMU was a case of differentiated integration in the EU. Subsequently, the incomplete EMU triggered the sovereign debt crisis, which undermined financial market integration and was addressed through the establishment of BU, which reinforced differentiated integration. Both EMU and BU have negative implications for the 'singleness' of the single market in financial services, potentially resulting in 'One Money, Two Markets'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the establishment of an 'incomplete' Banking Union and its 'asymmetric' effects? This paper takes an intergovernmentalistapproach to explain the incompleteness of Banking Union as well as its asymmetric functioning. The institutional design of Banking Union was a compromise between the preferences of the main member states, albeit it was closer to the positions of Germany. In turn, the incomplete institutional design of Banking Union has affected its subsequent functioning. It has produced asymmetric effects that have mostly penalised the member states in the Southern periphery of the euro area, notably, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece, which, to no avail, have called for completion of Banking Union. Banking Union has not severed the doom-loop in these countries and has weakened the institutional capacity of the national authorities to deal with ailing banks in these countries, without sufficiently strengthening the capacity of supranational authorities to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the rise of new conflicts of sovereignty especially with regard to popular sovereignty in the EU polity. It asks whether referenda in the national realm are effective tools to enhance popular sovereignty at supranational level. To elucidate this question, we distinguish between embedded and unilateral referenda. Empirically, the paper focuses on the referendum called by the Greek government on the proposed Memorandum of Understanding in 2015. While ambiguous from the outset, the referendum turned out to be of an embedded nature and failed to enhance popular sovereignty. Based on elite interviews and analysis of the discussion in the media, our analysis shows that the referendum was envisaged by the Greek government instrumentally to put pressure on the other negotiating parties and tackle internal party disagreements. This turned out to be a self-defeating strategy ignoring the popular mandate and failing to improve the conditions for financial assistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Europeanisation of Greek foreign policy during the Eurozone crisis. It proposes a conceptualisation of Europeanisation as de-politicisation and argues that national foreign policy in the EU under crisis has been re-politicised, i.e. it is increasingly contested among electorates while elites are becoming more conscious of the legitimacy deficits created when national policymaking is exercised primarily via EU institutions. In this context, Europeanisation of foreign policy becomes reflexive, i.e. it is subject to more active scrutiny by public opinion while foreign policy making reflects more elites' effort to manage increasingly fractious state-society relations. The article also differentiates between two types of re-politicisation of foreign policy: nationalist and societal politicisation, both of which were evident in Greece during the crisis years. Beyond these concepts, the article highlights more generally the importance of national party politics for foreign policy Europeanisation, a dimension mostly neglected in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that the quasi-fiscal nature of the ECB's unconventional monetary policy measures and its troika membership created three mutually reinforcing threats to its political independence. First, it led to a rising level of public distrust in the ECB. Second, it triggered an elite dissensus on whether political independence of central banks was still the appropriate solution to the time inconsistency problem. Third, it created institutional overburdening with negative repercussions for the central bank's output legitimacy. Faced with this diverse set of challenges in creditor and debtor countries, the ECB exploited EMU's democratic deficit by relying on visits to national parliaments to preserve its independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament (EP) obtained co-decision rights in economic governance for the first time. Soon afterwards, the outbreak of the eurozone crisis required a reform of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). When negotiating EMU reform, the EP sought to push its rights beyond the Lisbon provisions, so as to obtain an informal institutional change to its benefit. How and under which conditions did the EP extend its informal powers successfully – and when did it fail? By focusing on two crucial strategies – delaying and arena-linking – we compare instances of EMU reform where the EP succeeded in reaching an informal empowerment to cases where it failed. We find that the urgency of decision-making and its distributional consequences influence the EP's chances of success. While urgency plays a crucial role in times of crisis, distributional consequences come to bear in policies where core state powers are at stake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the impact of the Eurozone crisis on the EU´s 'democratic deficit'. It starts with a presentation of the main scholarly views of the EU´s democratic deficit, distinguishing between four broad camps and showing how they differ in terms of their diagnoses as well as their solutions. Then the article moves to discussing the current relevance of the so-called 'upgraded standard version' of democratic deficit. Building on this approach and using its criteria, we assess the measures taken in the course of the crisis. The article focuses on the impact of the crisis on 1) the powers of the EU´s executive institutions, 2) the role played by the European Parliament, 3) the (non-)existence of the European political sphere and 4) the policy drift from voters´ preferences. Finally, the article summarizes our main findings and points to the opportunities and risks in the aftermath of the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to offer an overview of the structures of democratic legitimisation in EU economic governance, and to consider their adequacy, examining in particular the question of the extent of parliamentary participation in such governance. Although much progress has been made in establishing throughput legitimacy and creating processes furthering the interests of accountability, transparency and efficacy, it will be seen that considerable deficiencies continue to exist, at both European and member state level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘The Financial Education of the Eurozone’ is both a story of global markets forcing political leaders to take unpalatable steps to reinforce their monetary union, and a dawning realization that if there is to be further integration it will have to come through reinforcing the interdependence of the euro area’s markets and banks. This study examines the historical logic behind the establishment of the euro, shows how fiscal and monetary backstops took shape amid the market turmoil and explores the nascent effort to impose structural reform. Finally, it outlines how European-level supervision and regulation of banks and capital markets have significantly bolstered the currency union and urges further progress on these reforms as the best hope for further progress during the current populist moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The eurozone crisis provided a new opportunity for obtaining supranational fiscal integration within the European single currency area. This study applies a framing analysis to the crisis discourse that emerged from within the European Union’s intergovernmental forums involved in fiscal policy coordination. As well as linking policy frames to two different integration scenarios for the Economic and Monetary Union, the broader influence of macroeconomic ideology is also emphasised. It is found that the response to the intensification of the crisis in Europe was to employ framing devices supporting intergovernmental fiscal discipline. While there were emergent supranational discourses over the longer term, these were reflective of a limited reform ambition. A key constraining factor here were the sovereignty concerns and issues of moral hazard circulating amongst member states, which together have ensured that a supranational fiscal policy is unlikely to be obtained in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sovereign debt restructuring played a key role in placing the US federal government on a sound financial footing under its new Constitution in 1789. State governments in the US, like national governments in the euro area, do not have bankruptcy protection. US state governments have not defaulted since the Great Depression, owing to a credible no-bailout policy by the federal government coupled with fiscal rules and an effective signalling of default risk by private markets. At the municipal level in the US, bankruptcy protections apply and recent default experience is very low. With permanent sovereign bailout mechanisms in place in the euro area, sovereign bankruptcy provisions might lessen officially induced moral hazard, allowing market discipline to function more effectively with respect to euro area countries than previously. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Euro-Crisis can be explained by the calamitous interaction of two neofunctionalist logics operating in the Eurozone since its inception: first, a logic of irreversible enlargement, and second, a logic of continuous deepening. The logic of enlargement perpetuates greater divergence among the members of the Eurozone, not only with respect to the productivity of national economies, but also, even more crucially, with respect to the reform capacity of political systems and the institutional characteristics of different varieties of capitalism. The logic of deepening expresses the irresistible tendency of a currency union towards closer political and economic integration. The clash of these logics threatens to overwhelm the political, institutional and ideological state capacities of very diverse members. Thus, the Eurozone has entered a dynamic trilemma: it presupposes (and to a certain degree requires) expansion to complement the Single Market; it needs to deepen far beyond its original and current set-up to function as a monetary union; and it needs a robust degree of legitimacy to survive politically. But it can satisfy only two of these objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macroeconomic policies in the Eurozone have been dysfunctional since the eruption of the financial crisis. The failure of these policies to guide the Eurozone out of the crisis has everything to do with the design failures in the Eurozone. In this article, we first remind the reader of the nature of these design failures. We then analyze how these have led to ill-designed macroeconomic policies. We then focus on the role of the ECB on correcting for these design failures. We conclude with some thoughts about monetary and political unification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how conditionality has evolved in the Eurozone during the debt crisis. Four main aspects are examined. The first is the trade-off between adjustment and financing, and in particular the possible resort to debt restructuring in advanced economies. The second is the decision-making process, which is particularly cumbersome in the Eurozone, as it relies largely on intergovernmental agreements and procedures, which proved to be inefficient and slow. The third issue concerns the financing conditions, which have initially been inspired on IMF programs, but proved excessively restrictive for a monetary union where countries cannot devalue in order to regain competitiveness. Finally, the article examines the contents of conditionality, and in particular the recent emphasis on structural reforms as a way to strengthen the supply side. A more sustainable framework requires greater political integration, in particular in the fiscal sphere, which is not easy to achieve in particular in the midst of a crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The eurozone has experienced a liquidity squeeze since the outbreak of the European debt crisis, leading to a crisis of confidence. Whether the European Central Bank (ECB) can become the Lender of Last Resort (LLR) has become the focus of discussions. The author begins by clarifying the definition of the LLR, and then analyses the possibility of the ECB or other institutions assuming the role of the LLR, taking into account the eurozone’s special economic governance model and legal framework. As the conclusion shows, with the introduction of Outright Monetary Transactions (OMTs), a debt-purchasing programme, the ECB and the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) will jointly act as the eurozone LLR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that pessimistic analyses of integration constitute a distinct category of critique separate from euro-scepticism or the democratic deficit literature. Drawing on an interdisciplinary analysis of law, political science, and international relations theory, three strands of europessimism are identified: realist, federalist, and social-democratic. The analysis of these varieties examines how the grounds for europessimism differ and how these can be applied to understand the causes and consequences of the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis. This application reveals how europessimism finds its vindication whilst also exposing evolution in how pessimistic each analytical tradition is. Indeed, whereas realism has never been optimistic about integration the article shows how federalism and social democracy are associated with optimistic or transformative visions of integration. Yet, the analysis concludes by showing the increasing pessimism of the social democratic tradition alongside the enduring optimism of federalism. By extension, the conceptual analysis of europessimism promises to have applications for the study of other research questions in European integration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Our paper investigates the impact of the global and the Euro crisis on citizens’ attitudes towards the European Union (EU). We measure the impact of the Euro crisis on two different levels: First, the crisis itself at the contextual level and second, and more importantly, at the individual level, referring to citizens’ perceptions of the crisis. Our main assumption is that during the crisis, economic explanations find their way back into the study of EU support. We test our hypotheses with 27 EU member states using different Eurobarometer surveys and apply descriptive statistics as well as multi-level regression analyses. Three conclusions emerge from the analysis: First, the impact of the Euro crisis is stronger than in the case of the global financial crisis. Second, support for the EU depends on both the contextual and the individual level although effects of the latter are more prevalent. Third, the effect of the individual perception of the crisis on EU support is stronger in Euro countries as well as in economically powerful countries. Altogether and contrary to major assumptions following post-functional arguments, our findings show that in times of the crisis economic factors again play a major role in the explanation of support for the EU. This leads to a rather critical evaluation for the future of the European integration process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper addresses the issue of fiscal policy coordination in the context of the current crisis. It first aims at clarifying the economic rationale for fiscal policy coordination in a monetary union with decentralized fiscal authorities, and at exploring the foundations of the kind of coordination devices chosen, as well as the incentives and constraints on member states' governments arising from the fiscal rules in the Euro zone, both in tranquil and in stormy economic times. We then proceed with an analysis of the difficulties arising from the heterogeneous nature of the Euro zone. The third section explores some of the possible causes of heterogeneity, with an emphasis on the issue of collective action and country size, with the co-existence of large and small countries, facing different incentives and constraints, hence tending to adopt divergent strategies in the occurrence of common macro-economic shocks. The possible evolution in automatic fiscal stabilizers is then addressed, followed by a section documenting the size and structure of national fiscal stimulus packages. The concluding section advocates a better mix of rules and discretionary coordination for fiscal policies in the Euro zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, the process of economic and monetary union (EMU) in Europe has brought the politics of exchange rates to the forefront of the policy agenda in international relations. This article will examine the significance of exchange rate policy making in Europe by considering the creation and operation of EMU as an example of club formation. There are two major benefits from viewing the process of EMU in this way. The first is that it allows a more fruitful analysis of any potential enlargement in the membership. Second, and leading on from this, it enables conclusions to be drawn regarding the optimal eventual size of the Euro area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]