European integration in the Euro crisis: The limits of postfunctionalism

The Euro crisis presents a puzzle to the postfunctionalist approach to European integration. In spite of unprecedented social hardships, politicization, loss of popular support, and political turmoil in the Eurozone, the Euro-crisis has produced major new steps of technocratic supranational integration. The paper shows that integration during the euro crisis can be sufficiently explained by a neofunctionalist account based on path dependency, endogenous preference change, and functional spillover. Finally, it explores three mechanisms that have helped to shield EU-level reform from a constraining dissensus: euro-compatible government formation, avoidance of referendums, and delegation to technocratic supranational organizations.