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Article

Open Access

Crisis of Solidarity in the European Union—No More Dreams of Europe’s Competitive Advantage?

Author(s)

Renata Mieńkowska-Norkienė

Full-Text PDF Download XML 446 Views

DOI:10.17265/2328-7144/2017.03.001

Affiliation(s)

Institute of Political Science of the University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
Business and Media School of the Mykolas Romeris University of Vilnius, Vilnius, Lithuania

ABSTRACT

The European Union has been experiencing the whole set of serious crises undermining European integration. The most important ones have been: financial and economic crisis, immigration crisis, crisis of nationalistic radicalization, Brexit, crisis of security caused by terrorism, strengthening of the Islamic State (ISIS), and destabilization of regions around Europe (mainly in the Middle East). The main thesis of this article is that all of them have weakened not only the EU as a whole but also the Member States. This has caused serious consequences being the main topics of this analysis, namely, (1) the value of solidarity lying upon the European integration concept being challenged by the crises; and (2) undermining by the crises the EU’s pursuit of achieving the competitive advantage, stated in the strategy Europe 2020. The lack of solidarity is strongly visible in the EU Member States’ differentiated attitudes towards the crises the EU has been facing. The paper will focus on analysis of solidarity in the light of intergovernmental approach supported by constructivism. The main research questions are: (1) To what extent have the EU crises strengthened the intergovernmental approach in the EU integration? (2) How has the meaning and scope of the solidarity as the main EU value changed over time in the EU’s citizens perception due to the EU crises? (3) To what extent have strong intergovernmental approach and instrumentalization of the solidarity value influenced pursuit for competitive advantage in the EU? (4) Does solidarity have a potential to contribute to efficient reform of the EU leading to strengthening its striving for competitive advantage in the future? The main research approach is intergovernmentalism while the dominating methods are a process-tracing supported by a systemic method. The main conclusion of the article is necessity for redefining the rule of solidarity in order to efficiently strive for competitive advantage.

KEYWORDS

EU competitive advantage, EU Member States, strategy europe 2020, European solidarity, intergovernmentalism, process-tracing method

Cite this paper

Economics World, May-June 2017, Vol. 5, No. 3, 183-194

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