EU or Euro Area Crisis? Studying Differentiated Integration as an Idea Structuring Elite Perceptions of the Sovereign Debt and the COVID-19 crisis

After the sovereign debt crisis, scholars concluded that euro area member states (EAMS) and non-EAMS embarked on diverging paths of integration. Yet, their united response countering the economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis contradicts the path-dependency argument. This article takes an ideational approach. It demonstrates that the different crisis outcomes regarding differentiated integration (DI) in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) coincide with variations of how DI influenced elite crisis perceptions as an idea. While policymakers perceived the sovereign debt crisis as a currency area crisis with threats and spillovers applying to EAMS, they interpreted the COVID-19 crisis as a health emergency threatening all EU member states. These differences in elite crisis perceptions facilitated different outcomes regarding DI despite unchanged economic and fiscal circumstances among EAMS and non-EAMS. The findings challenge deterministic assumptions on the self-reinforcing nature of DI in EMU and establish DI as an idea structuring elite perceptions.