The European Union: Integration in the Face of Crises

While the European Union may resemble a state in some ways, it is inaccurate to describe it as such, particularly because in certain cases, the EU does not act as one body; instead, individual member states make decisions. The EU is “far narrower and weaker a federation than any extant national federation,” making the comparison between a federal state and the EU problematic. Many of the functions of a state, including “taxation, social welfare provision, defense, foreign policy, policing, education, cultural policy, human rights, and small business policy,” are not dealt with on an EU level, but rather on an individual state level, meaning the power to influence these pillars remains with the member states of the EU.The EU more closely resembles a confederation than a state, in which several individual members unite to work toward a common goal but do not form a single homogeneous body. What does this mean for the functioning of the EU during widespread crises when individual states make their own decisions? Do crises lead to more division or further integration? Some recent crises, discussed below, have ultimately led to further integration. This suggests that current and future crises facing the EU may lead to similar outcomes. 

Crises Leading to Integration: Eurozone, Migration, and Brexit

The Eurozone crisis of the 2000s was an example of a crisis that ultimately encouraged further integration among EU member states following a period of intense division. The crisis can be attributed to the “stunted governance architecture of the EU’s Economic and Monetary Union and its single currency without a common fiscal policy.” In other words, member states subscribed to vastly different ideas regarding debt, inflation, borrowing, et cetera, which led to very dissimilar fiscal policies among member states. Initially, this led to tensions between certain member states, such as Germany and Greece, with the former accusing the latter of mismanagement of its finances, calling on Greece to “cut benefits and raise taxes” under the premise that this would “allow the floundering country to remain economically competitive.” The Greek government’s “chronic fiscal mismanagement and resulting debt crisis” were seen as threatening to the “stability of the eurozone.” Even a “Grexit”—Greece’s exit from the eurozone—became a talking point. 

The euro—the “most tangible proof of European integration”—is the currency used by 20 of the EU’s 27 member states, and is the second most-used currency in the world. It was launched in 1999 for electronic payments and accounting purposes, with coins and banknotes arriving in 2002. The euro was revolutionary in that it monetarily brought together the vast majority of EU member states, who began to operate financially under the same currency. Except for Sweden and Denmark, and a few states that joined the EU after the introduction of the euro (for example Poland, Romania, and Hungary, among others), most EU members gave up their national currency in favor of the euro. 

The first bailout for Greece occurred in 2010, with the International Monetary Fund “and Greece’s European partners” calling for “110 billion euros, or $146 billion, in loans over… three years” to “avoid a debt default.” Germany provided the “largest sum” of about 22 billion euros (the EU gave about 80 billion). Also in 2010, the European Semester was created, which “ensures that national economic, social and budgetary policies” of EU member states “are analysed and assessed together” at the EU level. By 2012, in a “step toward European fiscal integration,” all EU member states except the UK and the Czech Republic “sign[ed]a Fiscal Compact treaty mandating stricter budget discipline throughout the union,” demonstrating the EU’s commitment to integration as part of the solution to the financial crisis, and helping to prevent a similar one in the future, at the cost of some state sovereignty in order to move toward a stronger fiscal union. 

Most recently, the 2024 European Semester recommended several areas of improvement for Greece, including “[p]ursu[ing]the ongoing reduction of the stock of non-performing loans held by banks and credit servicers, [s]trengthen[ing]administrative capacity to manage EU funds,” and “[r]educ[ing]reliance on fossil fuels by accelerating the decarbonisation of the transport sector,” among others. 

In terms of joining the EU, financial and economic requirements are of the utmost importance, with the Copenhagen Criteria stating that to join, a country must possess a “functioning market economy and the ability to cope with the competitive pressure of the EU market.” To help prepare candidate countries, the EU heavily invests in their economic development. For example, between 2021 and 2024, the EU “allocated €586 million of financial and technical assistance to Serbia,” a candidate since 2012. In 2023, the EU “announced a landmark Growth Plan to accelerate Western Balkans partners’ socio-economic development and EU integration” in an attempt to specifically assist candidate countries in the Balkans in preparing for EU membership. 

Another example of a crisis affecting the EU in which member states made individual decisions came with the refugee crisis in 2015. The “tragedies around the European refugee crisis” were “partly rooted in the uneven development of the EU’s migration and asylum regime” in which some countries accepted far larger numbers of refugees than others. If the EU were a state, all member countries would have acted more uniformly during the refugee crisis, which was not the case. The massive differences in behavior toward refugees across the EU “exposed a series of deficiencies and gaps in Union policies on asylum.” The EU had established an “extensive legal framework for migration and asylum… without granting the EU’s authorities meaningful centralized enforcement capacities.” 

The refugee crisis exposed the need for a better asylum system throughout the EU, and many new developments were implemented as a result. In 2016, the European Commission proposed a “package of seven pieces of legislation with the aim to move towards a fully efficient, fair and humane asylum policy” to “function effectively… in times of high migratory pressure.” The following year, the European Commission and European Council “reached a broad political agreement on five out of the seven proposals, namely as regards the setting-up of a fully-fledged European Union Asylum Agency,” the reform of EURODAC (the EU’s asylum fingerprint database), the review of the Qualification Directive (which decides who qualifies for protection), and an updated “resettlement framework” (a “harmonised procedure for resettlement across the EU” meant to “replace the existing ad-hoc resettlement schemes”). The Commission also “presented a new proposal for a European Union Asylum Agency,” or EUAA, which was considered “critical in strengthening the European asylum system to ensure that asylum decisions are taken in a fast and fair manner, with the same high quality everywhere in Europe, bringing Member States’ asylum systems closer to each other.” The EUAA “establishes the legally binding rules and procedures that Member States must follow in order to guarantee that the rights of applicants for international protection are fully respected.” The EUAA is still in operation today, and its headquarters are located in Malta. 

Last May, the EU introduced its Pact on Migration and Asylum, a “set of new rules managing migration and establishing a common asylum system” at the EU level. The Pact’s goals include “ensur[ing]that the Union has strong and secure external borders, that people’s rights are guaranteed, and that no EU country is left alone under pressure.”

Very recently, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria provoked strong responses within the EU regarding how to treat Syrian refugees who had fled their home country during Assad’s rule. More than a million Syrians “were granted international protection in the EU between 2015 and 2023.” In the wake of Assad’s collapsed dictatorship, EU states like Italy and Austria “would like to designate Syria as a ‘safe country’ and deport Syrians,” despite the still-unknown outcome of the change in leadership. While Austria has already prepared to deport Syrian migrants, many other EU member states have promised to “halt” asylum applications submitted by Syrians. Interestingly, while the original migrant crisis a decade ago sparked division among EU member states in how to handle the influx, the new political developments within Syria have produced a relatively similar response throughout the EU, even from member states that ten years ago openly welcomed hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees (like Germany, where members of the Christian Democratic Union party have claimed to be “in favor of returning many of the country’s 800,000 Syrians to their homeland”). The outcome of the new developments in Syria relating to EU asylum policy and the status of current Syrian refugees within the EU remains unknown. 

Yet another crisis, Brexit (a unique and first-time crisis for the EU) led to further integration among remaining member states as well, particularly on an ideological level. When the UK began to suffer as a result of its withdrawal from the EU, other member states used the situation as an example of the negative effects of leaving the Union, and the positive aspects of membership were highlighted. French President Emmanuel Macron said, following Brexit in 2020, that the UK’s departure from the EU “should prompt us to proceed in a different way. To build with more determination a European Union that is powerful, effective, which you find more convincing and which rediscovers the historical path that makes this European Union a unique and… irreplaceable adventure.” Similarly, Gianni Pitella, a Member of the European Parliament from Italy at the time of the Brexit vote in 2016, said that the UK’s decision to leave was “not a funeral for Europe. This can be a new start for Europe, and we will regain the confidence of the citizens.” 

Even eurosceptic parties hesitated to adopt their own EU-exit strategies following Brexit. Issues regarding European integration “did not feature prominently” in most of the election campaigns of populist parties in the aftermath of Brexit. The individual state responses to Brexit can be explained by intergovernmentalism, a “state-centric explanation” of the European integration process that “privileges the role of states and state actors within European integration.” Individual states had separate reactions to the fallout from Brexit, leading to a strengthened sense of positivity among political parties toward the EU. In other words, since each state had the freedom to decide how it viewed Brexit, the overwhelming support among states for remaining in the Union was more meaningful.  

A recent development across Europe that will be important to watch in the coming years has been the increase in the popularity of far-right parties, some of whom have reopened discussions of exiting the EU. Arguably the most notable example is the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which “stated in its draft election manifesto” that it aspires to depart from the EU in “Brexit-like fashion.” However, doing so would prove extremely difficult, as Germany’s membership in the EU is “anchored in the German Constitution,” rendering unconstitutional any attempt by an AfD-led government to actually leave the Union. The AfD’s chancellor candidate, Alice Weidel, has referred to a “Dexit” as simply “Plan B.” 

Many current right-wing leaders, while eurosceptic at times, do not actually have concrete ideas of pulling their countries out of the EU. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is one such example, as he does not wish to “leave the bloc but instead shape it.” Last March, Orbán declared his desire to “bring change to the European Union,” but not for Hungary to leave it altogether. 

Similarly to other far-right politicians, Geert Wilders of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands “has understood the lessons of Brexit,” and has determined that, along the same lines as Orbán, “instead of leaving the EU, it would be better to stay and change it from the inside.” In France, the far-right National Rally party led by Marine Le Pen “no longer” features an exit from the EU on its electoral manifestos like it did in 2017.

The Most Pressing Current Crisis: Ukraine

The war in Ukraine presents an ongoing example of crisis response on a state level whose outcome is still unknown. The EU as a whole does not have a singular policy toward sending aid to Ukraine, but rather each state government determines its policy on this issue. This has led certain EU members like Estonia to provide a tremendous amount of aid relative to its GDP. Germany, under Chancellor Olaf Scholz, also gave generously to Ukraine’s efforts against Russia. Other EU members like Slovakia have decided to roll back support—Prime Minister Robert Fico recently “cast doubt on the effectiveness of Western support for Ukraine.” These differences are possible simply because although all of these countries are EU members, the EU has little power to control state-level decisions regarding a major foreign policy decision such as sending financial or military aid to a non-member country in need. In other words, the EU does not mandate that each member state contribute a certain monetary amount or a certain percentage of GDP in aid to Ukraine. 

Will the war in Ukraine ultimately result in further integration within the EU? A possibility of this comes with the potential for Ukraine itself to gain EU membership in the relatively near future. This past summer, Ukraine officially began EU accession talks, marking a “hugely symbolic moment.” Accession talks also commenced with Moldova, Ukraine’s former Soviet bloc neighbor. European Council President Charles Michel stated that Ukraine and Moldova are “embarking on a true transformation into full EU membership—a proud moment for both nations and a strategic step for the EU.” While Kyiv “will likely face a series of obstacles during the coming year, both domestically and on the international stage” in terms of pursuing EU membership, “[p]rogress in the country’s EU bid is realistic.” Russia’s violence toward Ukraine likely created a sense of urgency in the push for Ukraine’s EU membership status. In June 2022, the EU granted Ukraine candidate status, offering a “huge boost to morale in the embattled country,” which ultimately led to the accession talks of June 2024.

Conclusions: The EU Can Find a Way Toward Further Integration After Crises

Examples of crises affecting the EU within the last two decades have shown that solutions tended to involve further integration instead of division, sometimes unexpectedly. The outcome of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one of the more recent crises to hit Europe, is still unknown. While at first EU states overwhelmingly threw their support behind Ukraine, several have begun to roll back that support as the war drags on and an end feels far in the distance. However, we can view EU responses to past crises to suggest how the EU may continue to react to the Ukraine crisis. While at the onset of the migration crisis in 2015, many EU countries had varying responses, today it can be argued that many have started to feel more similarly—particularly after recent developments in the Syrian political landscape. The Eurozone crisis, while initially highlighting the division in financial policies across the EU, led to increased financial cooperation among member states with the introduction of the European Semester. Brexit, in which a member state pulled out of the union, led to an increase in commitment to EU values across the continent as the benefits of EU membership were underscored. The rapid increase in right-wing populism across Europe may lead to a renewal of EU-exit discussions in the near future (with parties such as the AfD already mentioning a desire to do so). It will be important to watch these developments as they unfold, and to see if a new crisis erupts regarding yet another member state leaving the Union. While this is not an exhaustive list of every crisis that has affected the EU since its founding, these examples offer highlights of how the EU has endured some of its most significant challenges yet, and how further integration may be a prominent outcome of both current and future crises. 

Editors

Cameron Roberts, Managing Editor

Kyla Bernal, Copy Editor

Nicole Monette

Nicole Monette (she/her) is a second-year master’s student in the Global Journalism and European & Mediterranean Studies program. She graduated in May 2022 with a Master of Science in Global Affairs from NYU, where she completed her thesis on plausible scenarios for the trajectory of the war in Ukraine. As a Global Affairs student, she was a member of a consulting project in conjunction with the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee researching the political climate in Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal in 2021. She was also the Managing Editor of Global Affairs Review, the student journal of NYU’s Center for Global Affairs. Before returning to NYU, she spent eight months in Rome and Milan studying Italian at an intensive language school. She is currently researching issues related to youth unemployment and depopulation in southern Italy, specifically the regions of Calabria and Sicily.