What drives the European integration process after the euro crisis? This paper develops the theoretical framework of New Presidentialism to understand how a new form of collaborative leadership has emerged in the euro-reform negotiations since 2012. Our theoretical framework focuses on the lower-level leadership provided by the Four Presidents framework (the European Council President, Commission, ECB and Eurogroup chairmen) in helping governments define problems and craft workable solutions to these.
We assess the role that their facilitating leadership had on improving both the efficiency of the process and in helping forge more expansive outcomes than would otherwise have been agreed. Showing the limits of both New Intergovernmentalism and Neo-Functionalism in capturing the drivers of euro reform negotiations, we attempt to shed light on the overlooked, but vital role of institutions deploying their informational and intellectual resources and procedural prerogatives in framing how issues are understood in everyday interactions between governments in the Council of Ministers/European Council and institutions. The empirical analysis builds on an in-depth analysis based on interview and documentary sources, resulting in a comparative assessment of the roles played by collaborative leadership across a number of different reform negotiations, including Banking Union and the European Stability Mechanism.
