Table of Contents

1. Europe’s union in crisis: tested and contested 2. Politicisation and integration through law: whither integration theory? 3. The EU’s problem-solving capacity and legitimacy in a crisis context: a virtuous or vicious circle? 4. Fleeing the centre: the rise of challenger parties in the aftermath of the euro crisis 5. After the Spitzenkandidaten: fundamental change in the EU’s political system? 6. The Commission: boxed in and constrained, but still an engine of integration 7. Reinterpreting the rules ‘by stealth’ in times of crisis: a discursive institutionalist analysis of the European Central Bank and the European Commission 8. Europe’s crises and the EU’s ‘big three’ 9. EU experimentalist governance in times of crisis 10. Why the single market remains the EU’s core business

About the Author

Brigid Laffan is Director and Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute (EUI), Florence. She has published widely on European Integration including Core-periphery Relations in the European Union (London: Routledge, 2016), Ireland and the European Union (2008), Renovation or Revolution: new territorial politics in Ireland and the United Kingdom, (2005), Europe's Experimental Union. Re thinking Integration (1999) and The Finances of the Union (1997).