Same, Same, but Different Effects: Why Did the Euro and EU Migration Crisis Lead to Different Integration Outcomes?

We live in a time of “permacrisis,” which has presented an unprecedented number of challenges to the EU (Riddervold et al. 2021, 4). We see that the impact of crises on EU integration differs from one case to the other. This gives rise to the following puzzle: why did a phenomenon that is described with the same “crisis” label lead to different integration outcomes?. Building on the work of Hupkens et al. (2023), this article argues that the variation in crisis outcomes can, to a large extent, be accounted for by identifying the type of crisis at stake. Drawing on over 30 semi-structured interviews with practitioners, the analysis of the EU's response to the Euro and EU migration crisis shows that there was significant variation in three key analytical crisis dimensions of severity, symmetry, and speed. This influenced the decisions made by heads of state and government regarding EU integration at the macro level, which also impacted political–administrative structures and processes at the meso level and operational capacity at the micro level.