Theorising the EU in crisis: De-Europeanisation as disintegration

Brexit has prompted renewed calls for EU studies to take seriously the problem of European disintegration. In fact, ‘disintegration’ has been on the field’s agenda for some time. With the EU suffering a ‘perfect storm’ of crises, some of which are thought to be existential, it is perhaps unsurprising that there have been calls to theorise disintegration (Zielonka, 2014) as well as a few attempts to map out what a theory of disintegration might look like (Jones, 2018; Vollaard, 2014, 2018; Webber, 2014). Part of the turn to disintegration has involved thinking through how and whether standard theories of integration would cope with the unravelling of the EU (Schmitter and Lefkofridi, 2016) or at least to posit ‘disintegration’ as an outcome that could follow from the interactive effects of several independent ‘crisis’ variables (Schimmelfennig, 2017). Meanwhile journalistic treatments, confronted by the eurozone and refugee crises along with the prospective exit of a key member state, often question the sustainability of the EU project.