Since the Maastricht Treaty (1992), we have been witnessing a barrage of political interventions as well as scholarly debates and analyses aiming at identifying, exploring and addressing the causes and effects of the multiple crises generated by EU law and policy. These debates, discussions and disagreements concern problems central to the very constitution (in legal as well as sociological sense of the word) of the EU. These range from EU’s deteriorating representation, its legitimacy and democratic deficit as well as its failure in promoting an integration between states and citizens going beyond the mere economic aspects. These factors have then produced more specific situations of crises, such as the crisis of solidarity in the Eurozone, the so-called “migration crisis” and Brexit. Many of these pose fundamental problems to the endurance of the EU integration as a constitutional project – the best example of which is Brexit. Notwithstanding the intensive political debate and the academic research and theorizing, many of the factors and mechanisms which generated the array of EU crises continue to persist. Therefore, some have argued, political crises have become the normal state of affairs in the EU. 

In light of the above, the aim of this workshop is to explore four wide but well-defined policy areas, i.e. migration, Brexit, labour mobility and social dialogue, as the backdrop against which a critical analysis of how EU institutions work can be conducted. By departing from concrete challenges to EU law and policy, and by paying special attention to the empirically discernible effects of different EU policies, we intend to contribute to the debate on the multiple crises of the EU by investigating the mechanisms through which crises (or at least critical issues) are produced and take form. Ultimately, this would throw new light on the causes of these crises and the institutional limits of EU in managing them. In view of the current state of EU Law and policy research, the workshop also aims at bringing the existing research on the multiple crises of the EU into dialogue, while engaging with empirical accounts in greater detail.