A Critical Inflection Point for the EU

Abstract

In this chapter we argue that the EU now finds itself at an inflection point in its history, in the form of an ‘existential crisis’—one that presents itself across a number of distinct-yet-related crises. The 'European Project' celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2017—celebrations muted by the impact of events such as the European Banking and Debt Crisis, and Brexit. It now faces into a period of change: change in the EC, in the Parliament, and in the Presidency of the ECB, together with proposed reforms. Two key issues rest on what lessons the EU has learnt from the events of the last decade and, by extension, how open the newly emerging regime will be to addressing the challenges of a new era. We argue that the EU’s capacity to move decisively beyond the various crises that trouble it is, in large part, dependent on the extent to which it acknowledges the reality of these crises (including the possibility of its own culpability in instigating and perpetuating them). This process of addressing the challenges revealed by Europe's economic catharsis is a necessary starting point for the longer-term project of reimagining the foundational, communally-orientated values that animated the vision of an embryonic EU—values that are wholly at odds with the stance and substance of Troikanomics.