Reconceptualizing the Eu's ‘Stateness': Updating the EU As ‘Region-State' in Light of the Eurozone Crisis

This paper considers how to reconceptualize the ‘stateness’ of the EU as  region-state, in particular in contrast to the main markers of the nation-state. It examines how thinking about the EU as a region-state contributes to some of the major problems the EU faces today, conceptually and institutionally.  The EU has limited democratic bases and lack of a communicative discourse  compared with those of a traditional European nation state. These political weaknesses have hampered its ability to forge a political identity that would give it legitimacy to undertake major reforms and protect it from blame shifting for problems whose causes often lie elsewhere. However, alternative views of EU ‘stateness’ that include sharing of sovereignty and alternative forms of democracy could increase the EU’s capacity for discourse that explains and legitimises its role in governing Europe’s economy.

Throughout, the paper considers how the Eurozone crisis has constituted a critical moment for the EU that may very well have moved the EU backwards and/or forwards in terms of stateness, identity and vision, governance and legitimacy. It suggests that updating our view of the ‘stateness’ of the EU would provide a political identity and communicative discourse whereby both responsibility for the Eurozone crisis could be appropriately distributed and solutions could be discussed and decided that would aid its collective resolution. It concludes with thoughts about how to consider the future of differentiated integration in the EU’s region-state.