As the global economy has faltered in recovering from the debt and financial crises,
the institutional efficacy (and sometimes even the overall viability) of one of its
strongest constituent parts, the Eurozone, has been questioned by academia, the media
and the political class alike. Observing the cat-and-mouse game between the all-powerful
and swiftly reacting global capital markets on the one hand and the slow, hesitant,
and always half-hearted reactions by EU governments on the other, the voices of scepticism
gained in momentum. This contribution seeks to identify the object of the current
crisis and to ex-plain its underlying causes. Furthermore, emerging policy solutions
are assessed with special emphasis on the economic theory of European integration.
