The outcomes of intergovernmentalism: the Euro crisis and the transformation of the European union

The book is divided in five sections. The first two sections explore the diverse ways in which the institutional system of the European Union has been affected by the unfolding Euro crisis and the efforts to contain that crisis. The contributions look at the impact on the relations between the EU institutions (for example, was there an increase of the power of the intergovernmental institutions?), the innovations in EU decision-making (such as the ‘invention’ of reverse majority voting in the Council), the experiments with the use of soft law instruments and with greater differentiation (between the EU-27 and sub-groups such as the EURO-17), and the use of international agreements situated outside the EU legal framework, which were used to adopt the Fiscal Compact and the European Stability Mechanism. The third section looks specifically at the prominent but rather secretive and, democratically speaking, somewhat anomalous role played by the European Central Bank in containing the Euro crisis. In the fourth section, the focus of analysis shifts from the European to the national level. The contributions to that section examine political and institutional changes that are taking place at the national level, and the way in which national elites have tried to accommodate the new demands from ‘Europe’ or to influence the decisions taken in the European arena. The authors of the fifth section present contrasting views on how the crisis has affected the significance of European citizenship and the rights attached to it, as well as the attitudes of European citizens towards the European Union and towards each other.