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once accepted democracy as the only legitimate form of government could become more open to authoritarian alternatives.’ 14 Despite these problems, not all hope is lost. Although the Great Recession and the crisis of the Eurozone have been traumatic, they have not yet fulfilled the criteria of repeated, violent delegitimation of the existing system that I laid out as the preconditions for rupture in chapter 1 . In fact, the dangers Europe faces at the start of the third millennium pale in comparison to those of the interwar years; in spite of everything, a third
of a monetary union was not new, and 72 The liberal foundations of globalisation had been floating around since the 1970s, possibly earlier. The European Round Table of Industrialists breathed new life into it by publishing Reshaping Europe in September 1991.55 This report was timely, providing welcomed support for Delors’s campaign for a single currency, which was part of a new reform package56 that would be incorporated into the Maastricht Treaty. Signed on 7 February 1992, the eighteen members of the Eurozone put the euro into circulation in 2002. Slouching
Conclusions The analysis of Spanish governments’ leverage vis-à-vis international lenders during the Eurozone crisis offers us empirical support for our arguments. This chapter shows that despite extreme pressure from the financial markets and European institutions, Spanish executives were not powerless. They were able to negotiate with external actors (e.g. fiscal deficit with the European Commission) and avoid the implementation of reforms (e.g. the pension sustainability factor). In line with our theoretical proposal, we demonstrate that the crisis
veneer of the ‘European spirit.’ While the actual threat to European security posed by these conflicts is minor, the façade of the classic narrative of integration has already started to crack as a result. The differing cognitive, motivational, and justificatory resources that emerge from treating 1989 as a rupture instead of (or in addition to) 1945 has thus ‘extended the EU’s memory agenda and posed a number of new challenges to the Union.’ 7 The onset of the Eurozone crisis in 2010 caused these cracks to widen into broader fissures that threaten the structural
bilateral instruments for trade and economic cooperation with Russia. The fourth section discusses the possible relevance of new ‘strategic’ visions for economic development that emerged after the Eurozone crisis and the final section draws attention to the important influence of alternative internal perspectives on economic and business relations on Russia. The conclusions sum up what the fine detail examination of economic relations tell us about the interplay of national/bilateral and European/multilateral approaches towards this key Eastern neighbour and also whether
splits from the UK to rejoin the EU, this would create a border that would impede trade between the two. The UK was always an aloof member of the EU and has avoided some of the problems of Europe by staying out of the eurozone, and not signing up the Schengen agreement, which entailed maximally open borders within the EU. But even with these opt-outs, too many people were too unhappy with EU membership, and Brexit succeeded. In addition to the crisis of the euro, the EU is indeed a vast elite-led bureaucracy, its key governing bodies democratically remote from the
German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has written extensively on the European Union.
This is the only in-depth account of his project. Published now in a second
edition to coincide with the celebration of his ninetieth birthday, a new
preface considers Habermas’s writings on the eurozone and refugee crises,
populism and Brexit, and the presidency of Emmanuel Macron.
Placing an
emphasis on the conception of the EU that informs Habermas’s political
prescriptions, the book is divided into two main parts. The first considers the
unfolding of 'social modernity' at the level of the EU. Among the
subjects covered are Habermas's concept of juridification, the
latter's affinities with integration theories such as neofunctionalism, and
the application of Habermas's democratic theory to the EU. The second part
addresses 'cultural modernity' in Europe – 'Europessimism'
is argued to be a subset of the broader cultural pessimism that assailed the
project of modernity in the late twentieth century, and with renewed intensity
in the years since 9/11.
Interdisciplinary in approach, this book engages
with European/EU studies, critical theory, political theory, international
relations, intellectual history, comparative literature, and philosophy. Concise
and clearly written, it will be of interest to students, scholars and
professionals with an interest in these disciplines, as well as to a broader
readership concerned with the future of Europe
that the UK had joined in 1973 became the European Union in 1991, following the end of the Cold War. In 1985, five EC countries had signed the Schengen Agreement, creating a borderless area among them. In subsequent years, more countries joined and, by 2017, twenty-six of the twenty-eight EU members had abolished passport and border controls at their shared borders. But the UK and Ireland never joined the Schengen zone. When the 1993 Treaty of Maastricht called for creation of a monetary union – the Eurozone – the UK did not join. Despite these important
before a new attempt could be broached. One more time, the right momentum was necessary to facilitate the relaunch of the negotiations. The economic environment was completely different from 2004. At this moment Europe was recovering from a financial crisis and from a weak eurozone, while the international crisis had not had that much of an effect in Latin America. However, in 2004 Brazil and Argentina were recovering from the economic crisis of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The negotiations between the EU and other Latin American regional groups and individual
Introduction The Republic of Ireland was one of the countries worst hit by the global financial crisis and the ensuing Eurozone crisis. It was the first EU country to go into recession and the first to require a bailout, it was effectively under the control of the troika and endured austerity measures for several years. Even though the country officially emerged from bailout conditions at the end of 2013, and recorded the highest rate of growth among EU member states in subsequent years, the social costs still weighed