Europeanisation and Renationalisation: Learning from Crises

The book explores how the European Union and its members have been renegotiating Europeanisation and renationalisation in response to the multiple crises they faced in recent years. The authors highlight varying understandings of ´crises´ in different national and supranational policy and institutional contexts. They show how in some cases these have challenged the legitimacy of European Union norms and institutions and even triggered disintegration, while in other cases these crises have served as sources of inspiration for European social innovation and political development. Over recent years, European societies have been experiencing a series of crises that have threatened the effectiveness and legitimacy of the European Union. The results have been contradictory across different fields, some of them indicating renationalisation and disintegration, others pointing towards more europeanisation and integration: Most prominently, the ‘refugee crisis’ has been met with conflicting domestic responses which have led the European Common Asylum System and Schengen into stalemate. The EU’s conflicts with Russia and Turkey have undermined the EU’s tool box of Eastern Partnership, neighbourhood policy and enlargement. The UK’s “Brexit” referendum of June 2016 is the most conspicuous case in point signaling renationalization rather than the strengthening of Europeanization in response to such crises. By contrast, the financial and sovereign debt crisis since 2008 has been conducive for the European Economic and Monetary Union to adopt new instruments for deepening and broadening the politics of Europeanization. Similar developments are visible in other policy fields such as energy and external climate protection. The book draws these contradictory trends together to discuss the lessons that have – and that have not – been learnt by political, economic and civil society actors in their struggles about European social innovation and political development • Europeanisation versus Neo-Nationalism in Times of Crisis • Reexamining the Crisis of European Integration • European Innovation and Development 250 pages