Southern Europe and the ‘trade off’ : architects of European disunion?

Bull, MJ

Abstract

This chapter views the southern European enlargement of the EU in the 1980s and the EU-southern European relationship as based on a form of ‘trade-off’ between ‘solidarity’ on the one hand and ‘sovereignty’ or ‘discipline’ on the other. It suggests that, while the trade-off appeared to work well until the launch of the single currency in a period which might be described as a ‘golden age’ in the EU-Mediterranean relationship, in the 2000s it began to deteriorate through a combination of different factors (launch of the Euro, enlargement, reform of cohesion policy, prospective reform of the common agricultural policy, economic crisis) of which the Eurozone crisis became the most critical reflection. This has produced a third level of crisis (between the EU and the southern European states themselves) that could produce new forms of solidarity and discipline embodying much tighter restrictions on economic sovereignty than in the past.

• Publication Date: Sep 1, 2012
• Deposit Date: Dec 7, 2011
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 23, 2020
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Series Title: Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics
• Book Title: European Disunion : Between Sovereignty and Solidarity
• ISBN: 9780230367739
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137271358
• Keywords: European Union; crisis' southern Europe
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781137271358