Stagnation

This first empirical chapter documents stagnation as a crisis outcome category. Stagnation is characterized by an initially formulated and already well-advanced political project that is largely considered important for European integration. Despite this, it is not ultimately realized. As the initial plan is new and never established, there is no (formal) change to the EU system. The two cases representing stagnation are the crisis of the European Defence Community (1952–1954) and the Constitutional Treaty crisis (2004–2007). In both cases, the crisis origin was endogenous to the European integration process, while the level of member-state interdependence was rather low and Franco-German leadership was absent. A key consequence of the failure was that in both cases, the EU returned to solutions that originally had been considered second best.