Amelie Kutter

Kutter, A. (2015) A model to the world? CFSP/CSDP and constructions of the EU polity in Poland and France

After the end of the Cold-War, the EU started advancing its Common Foreign and Security Policy and Common Security and Defence Policy (CFSP/CSDP), making them part of reform that eventually led to the Lisbon Treaty. The article argues that this endeavour was above all a project of polity-construction: it endowed European integration with new purpose, imagining the EU as a polity that legitimately asserted itself globally as a civilising power.

Kutter, A. (2014) A catalytic moment: the Greek crisis in the German financial press

The Greek crisis has attracted more public-political attention than any other sovereign debt crisis within the European Union. This article investigates the argument that this is due to the symbolic-catalytic role that the Greek crisis played in forging a specific approach to state rescue and the reform of th.e European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Drawing on assumptions of narrative political studies and Critical Discourse Analysis, the study shows how this approach was ‘catalyzed’ by a specific construction of the ‘Greek case’ in editorials of the financial press.

Past research project: Another legitimation crisis (2013-2014)

The Eurozone crisis and its management called into question the EU’s decision-making capacity and cast doubt on its responsiveness and accountability towards various groups’ and members’ demands. It also ruined the prospects for catch-up that poorer members of the European Union linked to membership and severely damaged the EU’s rationale of cohesion. The project investigates discursive struggles over the adequate management of the Eurozone crisis with regard to how they address the project of developmental catch-up and, thereby, redefine the centre and periphery. It is directed by Amelie Kutter at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder).