Cascading opt-outs? The effect of the Euro and migration crises on differentiated integration in the European Union
| Author | Frank Schimmelfennig,Thomas Winzen |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14651165221121720 |
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Cascading opt-outs? The
effect of the Euro and
migration crises on
differentiated integration in
the European Union
Frank Schimmelfennig
Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zurich,
Zurich, Switzerland
Thomas Winzen
Institute of Social Sciences, Heinrich Heine University
Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany
Abstract
Do integration crises reinforce legal differentiation in European integration? Are differ-
entiated EU policies under stress prone to cascading opt-outs? We argue that integration
crises as such are unlikely to cause further fragmentation in already differentiated EU
regimes. If the EU decides to adopt new treaties and laws in response to the crises, how-
ever, these are likely to reproduce and extend pre-existing patterns of differentiation.
Empirically, this study offers within-case counterfactual analyses of differentiation in
the Euro and the migration crises. Whereas the Euro crisis triggered a major institu-
tional change in the Eurozone, the member states could not agree on a thorough reform
of the asylum system. Correspondingly, we observe excess differentiation in the Euro
crisis but stable differentiation in the migration crisis.
Keywords
Crisis, differentiated integration, Euro crisis, European Union, migration crisis
Corresponding author:
Frank Schimmelfennig, Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zurich, Haldeneggsteig 4, 8092
Zurich, Switzerland.
Email: frank.schimmelfennig@eup.gess.ethz.ch
Article
European Union Politics
2023, Vol. 24(1) 21–41
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14651165221121720
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Introduction
The theory and practice of differentiation are closely linked to paralysis and crisis in
European integration. Deadlock and ratification failure in EU negotiations have regularly
produced proposals for differentiated integration (hereinafter, DI or differentiation) –to
exempt or exclude individual member states (at least temporarily) from, or to allow non-
member states to participate in, selected EU policies. The first general proposals for DI
came up in the 1970s, a period of economic crisis characterized by the ‘oil shocks’
and ‘stagflation’and a period of paralysis in European integration in the aftermath of
the ‘empty chair crisis’and the difficulties surrounding the Community’sfirst enlarge-
ment (Stubb, 1996).
However, the member states only started to implement DI when European integra-
tion picked up speed again in the mid-1980s. One prototypical case is the 1985
Schengen free travel agreement, an international treaty signed by 5 out of 10
member states outside the European Community framework. Another is the Treaty
of Maastricht with opt-outs secured by the UK during the treaty negotiations and by
Denmark after the negative Danish referendum of 1992. Ever since the EU has used
DI to bring together coalitions of the ‘willing and able’and to salvage agreements
threatened by domestic non-ratification.
The ‘polycrisis’has presented the EU with a new set of challenges (Zeitlin et al.,
2019). In the earlier cases, the problem consisted in overcoming obstacles on the way
to ‘more integration’. DI helped achieve agreement on new EU policies and member
states, and it produced a net gain in integration as a result. By contrast, the recent
crises have raised the spectre of disintegration in already integrated EU policies
(Vollaard, 2018). Two of them –the Euro crisis and the migration crisis –hit the most
differentiated domains of the EU: the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and the
Schengen–Dublin regime.
How do crises affect DI? DI responds to international heterogeneity and the politiciza-
tion of integration (Schimmelfennig et al., 2015; Schimmelfennig et al., 2023), which are
typically exacerbated in crisis situations. Crises, thus, potentially drive the membership
further apart and cause additional fragmentation. This is the pessimistic scenario.
According to the optimistic scenario, however, crises might draw the member states
together by demonstrating the need for common efforts and solidarity. We are interested
in exploring whether crises that hit differentially integrated policies create centrifugal or
centripetal effects (Kölliker, 2006). Does DI introduce break points into the institutional
architecture of the EU, which produce ‘cascading opt-outs’(Jensen and Slapin, 2012)
under stress? Or do crises create pressures to overcome divisions among the EU
member states and strengthen the uniformity of policy integration?
The literature on European crises focuses on explaining whether and why they have
influenced the institutional integration of the EU. Yet, it does not examine their impact
on differentiation specifically (e.g. Biermann et al., 2019; Börzel and Risse, 2018;
Genschel and Jachtenfuchs, 2018; Jones et al., 2016; Schimmelfennig, 2018). By con-
trast, research on DI has theorized and studied its drivers, conditions and effects
without particular attention to the effects of a crisis (Adler-Nissen, 2014; Jensen and
22 European Union Politics 24(1)
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