Chapter 2 gives scholars and students across disciplines, but also policymakers, trade unionists, and social movement activists, a clear account of the arcane new economic governance (NEG) regime that European Union leaders adopted after 2008. The chapter avoids jargonistic academic language as well as the Euro-speak of the EU’s economic governance documents when describing the setup and operation of the NEG regime. This is important if one wants to understand its internal contradictions and change the operation and policy direction of the EU’s NEG regime.

Chapter 5 opens for Part II of the book with the task of taxonomy, classifying the emergent post-crisis EU fiscal architecture from the perspective of fiscal federalism theory in order to determine what it demands from the EU legal order to ‘work’. Chapter 5 finds that, from the perspective of fiscal federalism theory, the EU has sunk the cornerstones of a highly centralized model of ‘proto-fiscal union’ that is far more apt to unitary states than any of the other federations touched upon in this book. At its core, the new model supplants a legal pillar of fiscal sovereignty and market discipline (an entrenched ‘no-bailout’ law) with a legal feature of unitary states: centralized financial assistance and legal governance of fiscal policy. Chapter 5 evaluates the demands this places on the European legal order, and provides directions for the remainder of the analysis of Part II.

Chapter 7 examines whether the fiscal governance architecture enacted since the crisis is reconcilable with the constitutional boundaries of member state fiscal sovereignty underlying the EU legal order as a whole. It conducts a piece-by-piece deconstruction of the European governance framework to identify instruments which trespass on ultra vires and constitutional identity rulings of national constitutional courts. It finds that the new architecture is dependent, for its stable functioning, on instruments which are beyond the boundaries of the EU legal order and profess to bind national legislators in economic/fiscal policy, contrary to member state constitutional identity jurisprudence. By restricting fiscal autonomy and providing bailouts, the EU has sunk the foundation stones of a unitary model that is manifestly incompatible with the constitutional jurisprudence of its twenty-eight member states catalogued in this book. This is not only legally unsound, but economically ineffective and injurious to good principles of fiscal federalism.

The European Union (EU) has its origins in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which was formed by six European countries in 1951. Since then, it has grown to 27 members through the accession of new Member States, and has increased its powers by adding new policy areas to its remit. At the time of writing, the EU is negotiating the first exit of a Member State after a majority of the UK electorate voted to leaving the EU on 23 June 2016 in a process that has come to be known as Brexit. The chapter explains the functions of the most important EU institutions (European Commission, Council of the EU, European Council, the European Parliament, and the European Court of Justice) and legal instruments (including directives and regulations). It proceeds by outlining the process of monetary integration, from the agreement in principle in 1969, to the creation of an internal market, and the adoption of the euro in 1999 by 11 Member States. The final section discusses steps towards financial integration, including the Financial Services Action Plan, Banking Union and Capital Markets Union.