This article draws on the work of Poulantzas to argue that European social democracy is in crisis because, since the 1980s, European integration has been articulated within a relationship of structural subordination to US-led globalised fginance capital, to which European capital has itself increasingly gravitated.

This article looks at the way socialist views of European integration and Britain's relationship to the EU have evolved since the 1960s, focusing on how they have been shaped by Marxist theories.

Can the EU constitute a 'social' model alternative to US-led neo-liberalism? This article focuses on Habermas's proposals for the formation of a new, progressive European identity, criticising his reliance on the liberal notion of civic solidarity.

The left has increasingly embraced European integration as a bulwark against globalisation. However, the view that the EU provides the potential for realising a progressive social and economic policy is problematic. This paper outlines a number of options for the left and evaluates their potential benefits and costs from within a political-economy framework.

Seeking to move beyond the left's rhetorics of national traditionalism and third-way reformism, this article revisits the work of Stuart Hall and his working formula of a 'Marxism without guarantees', arguing that it provides the European left with a specific avenue for radical renewal.

European trade unions have been widely criticised as having accepted, if not supported neo-liberal restructuring within the EU. Through an analysis of British and German trade unions and their position on economic and monetary union, and of the European-level strategies of the European Metalworkers' Federation and the European Federation of Public Services Unions, this article critically assesses the extent to which that criticism is justified.

This article deals with the remarkable shift in the meaning of the term 'Europeran social model' from representing the social democratic vision of Europe to legitimating neoliberal restructuring, to demanding the limitation of existing welfare systems. Yet it is also used by progressive groups to put forward an agenda for an alternative Europe.

The is article focuses on how parties of the left have responded to the challenge of 'Europeanisation'. While all parties engage with the EU, their Europeanisation varies in its intensity, depending on the party family. This article concludes that overall, party competition and ideological differences hinder the development of a left vision for the future of the EU.

Does the recent neo-populist turn in Poland represent a decisive rejection of neoliberalisation? This article argues that, despite a rhetorical radicalism that targets the EU, neoliberal technocrats and the former nomenklatura, the Kaczynski government continues to reinforce Poland's commitment to neoliberalisation.

This article suggests that the post-communist economy of Hungary has been subject to a political business cycle. It compares and contrasts the impact of two of the EU's instruments of convergence: conditionality as applied to states aspiring to EU membership, and the converegence criteria for membership of the EU euro zone.

This article examines the postwar roots of European unity and Britain's relationship to it, primarily in terms of foreign policy and the failed alternative political economy of the empire/Commonwealth. It focuses on the attempts of the British left to understand European unity and to formulate a coherent position in relation to it.

Employing a neo-Gramscian approach, this article argues that the European policies of the British left underwent three significant shifts in the post-war period. It argues further that these changes resulted from transformations in the balance of power between anti- and pro-EU forces, themselves linked to competing social forces at the global, European, national and institutional levels.

Applying a world-order approach, this article revisits debates concerning British trade unionism and the European Union. It argues that the 'Europeanisation of British unionism, strongly evident from the mid-to-late 1980s, dates back to the mid-1970s.