ABSTRACT

This book makes a distinctive contribution to the crucial debate on the European Union (EU)’s present and future development.

It systematically examines how the range of crises and challenges over the last decade have transformed the EU and relates those findings to the discussion of an increasingly differentiated EU. It argues that the post-crises EU shows clear signs of becoming a segmented political order with in-built biases and constraints. The book spells out the key features of such an order in ideational and structural terms and shows how it more concretely manifests itself in the EU’s institutional and constitutional make-up and in how member states constrain and condition EU action. Different states impose different types of constraints, as is underlined through paying explicit attention to the Visegrád countries.

This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of EU politics/studies, European integration and politics, East European politics and foreign policy.

chapter 1|18 pages

Introduction

chapter 3|24 pages

Illusions of convergence

The persistent simplification of a wicked crisis

chapter 5|19 pages

What kind of crisis and how to deal with it?

The segmented border logic in the European migration crisis

chapter 6|20 pages

Toxic ordoliberalism on the EU’s periphery

Slovakia, the Euro and the migrant crisis

chapter 7|20 pages

European solidarity in times of crisis

Towards differentiated integration

chapter 9|22 pages

Undermining the standards of liberal democracy within the European Union

The Polish case and the limits of post-enlargement democratic conditionality

chapter 10|21 pages

Newspaper portrayal of the EU in crises in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary

The Union’s imagined linearity 1

chapter 12|22 pages

Integration through differentiation and segmentation

The case of one Member State from 1950 to Brexit (and beyond)

chapter 13|17 pages

Conclusion

A segmented political order and future options