Muddling through the crisis : the contradictions of recent EU reforms

Abstract

The present article sheds light on recent European Union (EU) institutional trends since the economic and financial crisis that started to hit Europe in 2009. While much of the contemporary literature has stressed the ultimate rise of intergovernmentalism, here we propose a more open reading. We describe a chaotic evolution characterised by two sets of contradictions : between intergovernmental and Community methods (with recent institutional developments based on both EU and international law), and between the leading role of national governments and a context marked by a disguised and unbalanced federalism. All this implies major risks for the future of the EU.