European Integration in the Euro Crisis: The Limits of Postfunctionalism

Abstract

The Euro crisis presents a puzzle to the post-functionalist approach to European integration. In spite of unprecedented social hardships, politicization, loss of popular support and political turmoil in the Eurozone, the Euro crisis has produced major new steps of technocratic supranational integration. This article shows that integration during the euro crisis can be sufficiently explained by a neofunctionalist account based on path dependency, endogenous preference change and functional spill over. Finally, it explores three mechanisms that have helped to shield EU-level reform from a constraining dissensus: euro-compatible government formation, avoidance of referendums and delegation to technocratic supranational organizations.

Keywords:

• Euro crisis
• neofunctionalism
• path dependency
• postfunctionalism

Notes

1. http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/05/13/the-new-sick-man-of-europe-the-european-union/.

2. http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/05/29/european-unity-on-the-rocks/.

3. http://www.ecb.int/press/key/date/2012/html/sp120726.en.html.

4. See also Author; Yiangou, O’Keefe, and Glöckler (2013). For a different historical-institutionalist account focusing on how initial responses to the crisis shaped subsequent institutional choices, see Gocaj and Meunier (2013).

5. Government declaration, 27 February 2012 (http://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/bundestaggriechenland108.html).

6. http://www.angela-merkel.de/page/103_686.htm.

7. http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2012/07/31/hollande-et-monti-determines-a-tout-faire-pour-consolider-la-zone-euro_1740722_3234.html.

8. Compare e.g. the scenarios in Straubhaar (2011, 30–1) and The Economist, 26 May 2012, 26–7.

9. See http://www.euractiv.com/priorities/merkel-wants-scope-expel-eurozon-news-354178; http://www.euractiv.com/euro-finance/german-consent-helping-greece-st-news-375148.

10. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/03/us-g-idUSTRE7A20E920111103.