New Perspectives for the EU after the Financial Crisis
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12201 |
| Author | Christian Schweiger |
| Date | 01 May 2015 |
| Published date | 01 May 2015 |
New Perspectives for the EU after the
Financial Crisis
Christian Schweiger
Durham University
Turbulent and Mighty Continent: What Future for
Europe by Anthony Giddens. Cambridge: Polity, 2013.
224 pp., £16.99 hardcover 978 0745680965, £9.99 paper-
back 978 0745680972, £7.49 e-book 978 0745681276
The Future of Europe: Democracy, Legitimacy and
Justice after the Euro Crisis edited by Serge Champeau,
Carlos Closa, Daniel Innerarity and Miguel Poaires
Maduro. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014. 304 pp.,
£75 hardcover 978 1783481125, £24.95 paperback 978
1783481132, £24.95 e-book 978 1783481149
Challenges for Europe in the World, 2030 edited by
John Eatwell, Terry McKinley and Pascal Petit. Farnham:
Ashgate, 2014. 408 pp., £72 hardcover 978 1472419255,
£25 paperback 978 1472419262, £25 e-book 978
1472419279
These three books are published at a crucial time for
the EU, which has been embroiled in a profound internal
crisis since the onset of the economic turmoil that
resulted from the financial crisis in the US in 2007–08.
The partial collapse of parts of the US financial sector
rapidly spilt over into European economies and particu-
larly affected parts of the eurozone, where individual
countries were plunged into severe debt crises. The
eurozone crisis substantially changed the EU’s internal
dynamics by pushing Germany into a position which
Willie Paterson characterised as the EU’s‘reluctant
hegemon’
1
. Based on its relatively strong economic per-
formance during the crisis Germany was forced to adopt
a leading role in determining the EU policy response to
the increasing instability in the eurozone. The German
Chancellor Merkel subsequently pushed the rest of the
EU to adopt multiple new layers of policy coordination.
Merkel was primarily concerned with restoring the dwin-
dling levels of market confidence in the eurozone. She
therefore successfully promoted a new policy framework
for the EU which is strongly characteristic of the principle
of ordoliberalism, the core feature of Germany’s post-
Second World War national political economy.
The ordoliberal culture aspires to combine economic
liberalism with social cohesion but strictly on the princi-
ple of central bank independence and monetary stabil-
ity.
2
Merkel emphasised that the ultimate purpose of the
post-crisis policy mechanisms would be to instil a culture
of long-term budgetary and macroeconomic stability in
the eurozone and beyond. In 2010 Merkel and a more
reluctant French president therefore led the way towards
the implementation of the European Semester, the
annual cycle of budgetary and macroeconomic policy
coordination and supervision under the Europe 2020
Strategy. This was followed in 2011 by the Euro Plus Pact
which determined even deeper policy coordination
between the eurozone core and aspiring future mem-
bers, and finally by the intergovernmental treaty on sta-
bility in the eurozone (the Fiscal Compact), signed by 25
member states and vetoed in its original form by the UK.
The treaty requires signatory countries to implement a
debt brake in their national constitutions.
The strong focus on fiscal solidity and macroeconomic
stability in these mechanisms resulted in the obvious
neglect of the social aspects of postcrisis consolidation.
The latter appear in the form of concrete but rather
unrealistic targets under the Europe 2020 Strategy, espe-
cially given the strict budgetary limits that have been
imposed on the eurozone since the onset of the crisis.
Moreover, the eurozone and wider EU postcrisis policy
mechanisms are widely considered to be part of an
increasingly technocratic and opaque web of elite-driven
governance which lacks transparency and democratic
accountability.
The changes in the EU’s mode of governance and the
resulting problem with the lack of democratic account-
ability has so far been widely neglected in the literature
which analyses the effects of the financial crisis. The
book by Anthony Giddens makes an important contribu-
tion in this respect as it analyses the effects of the
changes in the EU’s governance since the onset of the
crisis. Giddens argues that under the crisis conditions
the EU has witnessed a shift from its traditional mode of
governance (EU1), which was essentially the traditional
community method of uniform and collectively agreed
integration driven by the Commission, towards a new
form of governance (EU2). The latter is characterised by
a more flexible and informal approach with a shifting set
of actors determining the leadership at certain periods in
time, such as Germany, France, and the European Central
Bank, and (to a lesser extent) the European Commission
©2015 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2015) 6:2 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12201
Global Policy Volume 6 . Issue 2 . May 2015
176
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