ABSTRACT
This brief chapter forms the book’s introduction. It starts by introducing the key question that the book addresses, namely: What is the relationship between differentiation and domination in the EU of today? The key terms differentiation and domination will be defined and their various facets will be spelled out in further detail in Chapters 2 and 3. In this chapter, we explain why it is important to understand the relationship between differentiation and domination, and why we focus on the EU’s poly-crises, that is to say, the many crises and challenges that the EU has undergone in the last decade and a half. The last part of the chapter provides a brief overview of how the book is structured so as to shed light on the relationship between differentiation and dominance in this phase of the EU’s development.
