ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides the national European Union (EU) policy coordination in the countries severely affected by the Eurozone financial and debt crisis. It explores original criteria, both in the selection of the case studies and in the choice of the perspective on the financial crisis, since internal side-effects have been studied in different directions. The book discusses legal and political issues and is both empirical and theoretical. It examines hypotheses derived from constitutional and administrative scholarship as well as new institutionalism, including both its different general variants and its specific applications to the EU. The book assesses whether the Eurozone crisis was a critical juncture that transformed the national EU policy coordination system in case studies. A reconstruction of the legal and the political framework in each country in order to determine what changes have taken place since the outbreak of the crisis.
