The State of the European Union. The European Parliament faces its most important elections yet

RIGHT-WING POPULISM IN THE EU: A THREAT TO THE INTEGRATION PROCESS 53 from North Africa or from the “internal centres” in individual states. In this way, the trend to- wards re-nationalisation means that there is still no resolution to the underlying problems be- tween member states, which the June summit was originally intended to solve. The EU summits of October and December 2018 did not achieve any breakthroughs on the contentious issues. There is agreement on in- creasing the number of staff at Frontex, albeit at a slower pace than suggested by the European Commission. More work is to be carried out on the questions of the Common European Asylum Law (seven legislative proposals), setting up an asylum agency, and a common return directive (European Council, December 2018). The Commission attempted to speed up consulta- tions on a common asylum law by removing the question of a common distribution system from the legislative package, however, this failed due to German resistance, despite strong support from Austria and the Visegrad states. The (continued) failure of EMU reforms The failings of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) became abundantly clear from 2010 on, and since then the EU has talked increasingly about reforming the euro struc- tures. In 2012, under Barroso, the Commission put forward a blueprint for EMU reform, including the following key elements: introduction of an economic government responsible for anti-cycli- cal fiscal policy, Eurobonds, and a debt-relief fund for a common European debt policy. According to these plans, the EP would take on competence for democratic control of this eco- nomic government. However, the trend towards re-nationalisation was becoming evident by the European elections of 2014 at the latest, mak- ing it clear that these sensible but extensive re- form plans would come up against massive re- sistance. The reform debate then ran aground, and was only revived in 2017 by new proposals from the European Commission and the new French President, Emmanuel Macron. The Commission’s plans in spring and au- tumn 2017 did not go nearly as far as Barroso’s above-mentioned plans, and essentially con- sisted of a slightly larger EU budget, which should also receive resources for combating asymmetric crises and promoting (neoliberal) reforms in individual EU states, without, of course, providing transfer payments from the EU for these member states. The Commission also recommended converting the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) into a European monetary fund, and expanding the banking un- ion through a common European deposit guar- antee and a backstop for the resolution fund. Emmanuel Macron’s proposals went further, although the details of his plans were never fully formulated, of course. Macron’s main con- cern was to significantly increase the EU budg- et, and to have an independent budget for the eurozone to combat crises and stimulate invest- ments. In the course of negotiations in 2018, most of the reform proposals made by the European Commission and Emmanuel Macron failed. This failure came partly because of half- hearted support for Macron’s ideas from Merkel’s government, and partly because of re- sistance from the “Hanseatic League”. Merkel was reticent principally because the CDU-CSU parliamentary group rejected the plans for a larger EU budget and an independ- ent eurozone budget for stabilisation purposes.