Crises have frequently served as the catalyst for European integration, but have they left the EU lacking a coherent constitutional architecture? Vera Spyrakou argues that as traditional international structures come under strain, the pragmatic and experimental nature of the EU should be viewed as a source of strength rather than weakness.
European integration has long been shaped by crisis, but in recent years, emergency action has become a structural mode of governance for the EU. Financial instability, the COVID-19 pandemic, security threats, climate change and geopolitical fragmentation have compelled the EU to act decisively in the absence of consensus.
Rather than suspending integration, these crises have accelerated it, albeit in uneven ways. This form of integration can be described as a “federal emergency”, where the EU’s authority expands not through a formal constitutional settlement but through urgent, collective risk management.
Emergency measures have enabled the temporary pooling of sovereignty, the creation of new instruments and the extension of EU competences beyond previously agreed limits. But over time, provisional measures can become normalised, reshaping expectations about the scope of EU action.
This type of integration is distinct from classical federalism. It does not presuppose a final constitutional endpoint, such as a European federal state. Instead, it operates pragmatically, assembling authority where needed and retracting it where political resistance remains strong. This flexibility has allowed the EU to survive repeated crises, but it has also transformed the nature of integration itself.
The EU no longer advances primarily through treaty revision or grand political bargains, but through adaptive governance under pressure. Understanding integration in these terms challenges linear narratives of European federalisation. It suggests that the EU is less a constitutional project in waiting and more an evolving political formation shaped by contingency. This has significant implications not only for internal governance but also for how the EU relates to the outside world.
The limits of enlargement
Nowhere are the tensions of this evolving political form more visible than in the case of EU enlargement. Article 49 TEU codifies the procedure through which European states may apply for membership, anchoring accession in a framework of shared values, legal harmonisation and institutional finality.
Enlargement, in this sense, presumes a relatively stable conception of political community: clear borders, defined membership and a linear progression from candidate to full member state. Yet this logic increasingly sits uneasily with contemporary geopolitical realities.
The procedural rigidity of Article 49 reflects an older conception of the international system in which states move between clearly demarcated categories of inside and outside, and where membership represents the culmination of political transformation. In a world marked by fluid alignments, overlapping authorities and persistent uncertainty, this model appears increasingly strained.
This does not render enlargement obsolete, nor does it diminish its normative or strategic importance. Rather, it exposes the limits of relying on accession as the primary engine of political integration. As crises multiply and geopolitical pressures intensify, the EU has begun to explore alternative forms of association that do not fit neatly within the enlargement paradigm.
The significance of Article 49, therefore, lies not only in what it enables but also in what it constrains. It highlights the gap between the EU’s formal constitutional architecture and the more experimental practices that now characterise its external relations. This gap opens space for new forms of cooperation that challenge traditional distinctions between members and non-members.
Post-membership integration
The deepening of EU cooperation with Canada illustrates this shift particularly well. Unlike enlargement candidates, Canada does not seek EU membership, nor does the EU envision it as a future member. Yet cooperation has expanded across trade, regulatory alignment, security and climate policy, while both sides have cultivated shared democratic values.
This relationship cannot be adequately captured by conventional models of intergovernmental cooperation, nor does it fit within the logic of accession. Instead, EU-Canada relations point toward a form of post-membership integration: selective, functional and value-based, without the territorial or constitutional commitments associated with membership.
Such cooperation reflects a broader transformation in how political authority and solidarity are organised. The EU is no longer simply extending its borders or exporting its acquis. It is experimenting with forms of governance that transcend territorial inclusion.
From the perspective of international political theory, this development is significant. It suggests the EU is contributing to a reconfiguration of the international system in which political association is no longer anchored solely in state sovereignty or formal membership. Authority becomes layered, partial and issue specific. Partnerships are built around shared objectives rather than shared territory and integration proceeds without a singular institutional endpoint.
Canada, in this sense, is not an exception but a signal. It exemplifies how the EU’s experimental logic, shaped internally by the federal emergency process, extends outward, producing new modalities of cooperation that challenge the binary logic of inside and outside. These arrangements do not replace the state or dissolve sovereignty, but instead complicate traditional understandings of political order.
The EU as an unfinished political formation
Taken together, these trends show that European integration is best understood as an unfinished political formation. Its strength lies not in institutional closure but in adaptability. Rather than converging toward a fixed constitutional model, the EU evolves through provisional solutions, experimentation and pragmatic responses to crisis.
This has broader implications for how we understand the remaking of the international system. The EU is not a template to be replicated elsewhere or the inevitable future of political organisation. What it provides is a laboratory in which new forms of authority, solidarity and cooperation are being tested under conditions of uncertainty.
These experiments challenge the assumption that political order must be grounded in either sovereign states or fully federalised entities. In this light, debates about whether the EU is becoming “more federal” risk missing the point. The more pressing question is how integration reshapes political possibilities, enabling forms of association that are flexible, reversible and plural.
The federal emergency is not a temporary deviation from normal politics. It is increasingly the condition under which political innovation occurs. This was visible during the recent Greenland crisis, where cooperation between Denmark and the UK was shaped by pragmatic solidarity rather than institutional affiliation.
European integration, then, should not be judged solely by its coherence or completeness. Its significance lies in its capacity to expand the repertoire of political forms available in a fragmented world. As traditional structures of the international system strain under new pressures, the EU’s unfinished, experimental nature may prove to be less of a weakness and more of a strategic asset.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of LSE European Politics or the London School of Economics.
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