FOUR SCENARIOS FOR THE REINVENTION OF EUROPE
FOUR SCENARIOS FOR THE REINVENTION OF EUROPE

Author(s): Mark Leonard
Subject(s): International relations/trade, EU-Accession / EU-DEvelopment
Published by: ECFR European Council on Foreign Relations
Summary/Abstract: Europe’s leaders see the need for “more Europe” to deal with the euro crisis but do not know how to persuade their citizens, markets, parliaments or courts to accept it. This is the root of Europe’s political crisis: the necessity and impossibility of integration. European integration has been defined by two contradictory but mutually reinforcing forces that operate on both the European and national level: technocracy and populism. But the more technocratic the EU has become, the more it has provoked a populist backlash. European leaders are now unable to solve the euro crisis because they can only force inadequate solutions through loopholes in the Lisbon Treaty. // Four routes towards solving Europe’s institutional crisis are now emerging: asymmetric integration by working around the existing treaties; a smaller, more integrated eurozone based on the existing treaties; political union through treaty chan-ge; and a deal among a new vanguard through a Schengen-style treaty. There are also calls to strengthen each of the three traditional channels for democratic participation in order to restore legi-timacy: European elections, referendums and national opt-outs. Whichever of these options Europe ultimately chooses, the challenge will be to solve the acute euro crisis without at the same time exacer-bating the chronic crisis of declining European power.

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