ABSTRACT
Over the last six decades, much of European integration has occurred ‘by stealth,’ 2 through elite agreements, judicial decisions, and a deliberate focus on technical political matters – the so-called low politics. 3 In a context in which European integration was built in the shadow of the public’s interest and approval, leaders, from Adenauer and Mollet to Mitterrand and Kohl, were able to exert a decisive infl uence over the construction of the EU. Today, it has become obvious that a focus on low politics is no longer enough. 4 While European integration has survived many challenges, none have been as existential as the current set of simultaneous crises: British withdrawal from the EU, the economic dysfunction inside the Eurozone, the refugee crisis, and the security threats emanating from Europe’s immediate neighbourhood. 5 The Eurozone crisis in particular has blurred the differentiation between ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics and revealed profound inadequacies within the EU’s governance architecture. 6 It laid bare the uneasy balance between competing supranational institutions on the one side and member states – each with different interests – on the other. 7 It also illustrated the growing economic and social divergence within the EU, with some member states struggling with massive unemployment, debts, and loss of productivity and global market share, while others – notably Germany – have almost full employment and run high current account and trade surpluses. 8 The ‘concrete achievements’ that were to garner public support have become costly burdens, and many Europeans ask: What for? Robert Kaplan claims that the very edifi ce of the EU is unravelling and that the old historic tensions in Europe risk reappearing. 9
crises, analyse the structural technical fl aws of EMU that have now become apparent, or pass judgement on the recent institutional and policy responses. 10 Rather, it is to refl ect on the changes in the modes of decision-making that are taking place in the EU, and what this means for the future of leadership in Europe.
