Abstract
This chapter outlines an Open Economy Politics (OEP) perspective on how national interests are formed and how they matter in European politics. It focuses on national economic interest, which defines the governments' preferences with regard to European economic policymaking. The key point of the OEP approach to European political economy is that national interests emerge in a process of upward aggregation. The chapter enumerates the major issues of the Euro crisis and Brexit under the OEP perspective. It highlights that the conflict between the distributional winners and losers over economic crises and economic policies sits at the very heart of European political economy.
Copelovitch, Mark