The EU: Still “Integration through Law”?

This paper aims to analyse the challenges the Eurozone crisis created for the idea of the European Union as a process of “integration through law”. Starting from a definition of the two central characteristics of the crisis – the increasing politicisation of the domestic level and the strong call for legal regulation of and court responses to the EU’s economic governance – this article systematically analyses the capacities of the narrative of “integration through law” to explain the way the EU has dealt with the situation since 2008. “Integration through law” while linking the domestic level and the EU level, does not sufficiently take into account the variables of public opinion, civil society and public sphere to answer the crucial question why a more politicized and opposed domestic level leads to continued integration through (hard) law. It is in broadening our understanding of “integration through law” that we find tools that allow us to grasp contemporary EU integration through law in politicised times.