The EU from Differentiation to Decoupling

• In Event: Differentiation and Dominance in Europe

Abstract

The EU has been dramatically shaken by the 2010s multiple crises. Although several proposals have been advanced for reforming the EU, all of them have concerned the policies for dealing with the crises, not the governance for managing them. The main alternatives to the governance’s status quo have remained the transformation of the EU either in a quasi-international organization or in a quasi-state organization. In both cases, internal differentiation would make possible the adaptation of different member state perspectives to the chosen alternative. The paper advances a different strategy for dealing with the effects of the crises, based on the constitutional distinction between a smaller core group of Eurozone member states and the larger economic community of the single market, within which the former will continue to operate. It is the strategy of promoting a federation within a confederation, to use the concepts derived from the comparative federalism’s literature.

Author

• Sergio Fabbrini, Luiss Guido Carli