European Disintegration? Elusive Solidarity

Issue Date October 2012
Volume 23
Issue 4
Page Numbers 54-61
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Europe’s economic crisis has been transformed into a crisis of democratic governance that could roll back five decades of integration. The European Union may disintegrate because its “commanders” are unable to converge three distinct economic, political and institutional theaters in which the crisis is being played out. The EU lacks sound democratic means to legitimate the policies necessary for transborder financial transfers and budgetary discipline. The key European actor, Germany, has adopted policies that fail to ease pressure from the markets and have stimulated political opposition against the German “dictate.” As a result Germany is less committed to saving the European project.

About the Author

Jan Zielonka, professor of European politics at the University of Oxford and Ralf Dahrendorf Fellow at St. Antony’s College, is coauthor (with Mark Leonard) of A Europe of Incentives: How to Regain the Trust of Citizens and Markets (2012) and author of Europe as Empire: Enlarging and Reshaping the Boundaries of the European Union (2006).

View all work by Jan Zielonka