This study discusses the challenges that economic policy-makers in Europe have to cope with, in order to ensure an economically prosperous and institutionally stable community of Member States of the European Union (EU). At the analytical level, we not only document a process of...

This paper analyses how Italy's decades-long decline turned the country into the euro area's Achilles heel, the most vulnerable spot in the common currency. We use a structuralist framework to synthesise different (competing) supply-side and demand-side explanations, accounting for long-term...

Preferences about the vertical distribution of power in federal systems are not well understood. I argue that negative historical experiences with higher-level governments can plausibly raise demands for exit strategies and a devolution of power. But integration, for instance delegating power...

Preferences about the vertical distribution of power in federal systems are not well understood. I argue that negative historical experiences with higher-level governments can plausibly raise demands for exit strategies and a devolution of power. But integration, for instance delegating power...

There is little causal evidence about deep-rooted sources of support for shifting power from nation-states to international organizations. Focusing on the European Union, this paper develops the hypothesis that citizens appreciate the role of international organizations in constraining member...

We investigate the factors influencing the choice of domestic judges to pass on cases to the Court of Justice of the European Union. While EU judicial scholars have typically relied on integration theory or ad hoc theories of adjudication to explain referral activity, our theoretical framework...

The Court of Justice of the European Union is an important motor of integration and is said to be particularly strong in those cases where the Council shows an inability to act. What is the relevance of the Court to social Europe? Europeanisation studies analyse how member states change due to...

Understanding the European Union (EU) as an autonomously constitutional entity—what this volume evocatively calls the EU’s ‘constitutional imaginary’—has been central to judicial decision-making and legal scholarship on European governance over many decades. If our aim, however, is to...

Differentiated Integration (DI) has been a core issue in the debate surrounding European integration by both political and legal actors within the EU since early on in its existence. The debate has now shifted to the effect that DI will have post-Brexit, as those in favour of European...

In the early 1950s, the drive to find a practical solution to European antagonisms led to the construction of the first Common Market at the European scale, between Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. At the heart of the Coal and Steel Community, was the idea that...