The European Council on Foreign Relations

The EU is in trouble. But what are the ideas that can revitalise Europe and make it a force once the immediate crisis is over?

“Die situation ist da – the situation is there” as Konrad Adenauer famously said. The European Union is currently faced with a crisis that threatens it on several levels, from the day to day functioning of governments to the principles that have underpinned its expansion over the last couple of decades.

The global financial crisis has translated into a European sovereign debt crisis and a crisis for one of the fundamental pillars of European integration, the euro. This is dividing member states, and threatening the EU’s model of an integrated community of nations that share sovereignty through multilateral institutions. It is not just the euro and projects like Schengen that are being shaken, but a vision of a prosperous and united Europe that punches its considerable weight on the world stage.

What needs addressing, therefore, is not just the immediate cause of the crisis, but the whole edifice of European union. In the first official publication of ECFR's project, Mark Leonard examined the 'Four scenarios for the reinvention of Europe', looking at why the impossible was also necessary if EU leaders are to deal with euro crisis without exacerbating the chronic crisis of declining Europe power.

The reinvention debate was also the background to an article by George Soros in the Financial Times, where he argued that:

“Generating the political will would require a Plan B for the EU itself… An open society does not treat prevailing arrangements as sacrosanct; it allows for alternatives when those arrangements fail.

“It should be possible to mobilize a pro-European silent majority behind the idea that when the status quo becomes untenable, we should look for a European solution rather than national ones.”

Over the coming months, ECFR will collect a series of essays and articles that examine how Europe can get through this period of crisis and once again become a relevant and vital part of the 21^st century world. ECFR’s annual Council Meeting, which in 2011 was held in Warsaw in November, debated the reinvention of Europe. Click for audio podcasts (Part 1 and Part 2) from an open session at the Council Meeting, where we debated the political side of the euro crisis.

You can find the commentary articles for 'The reinvention of Europe’ project in this special section, along with related blog posts and other material. Feel free to let us know what you think, by commenting below any of the articles or blog posts that we publish. We also look forward to comments and suggestions on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

We are also running a series of responses to Mark Leonard's paper on 'Four scenarios for the reinvention of Europe' from prominent thinkers and academics:

1. Harold James: 'The more Europe suffers, the more its people will see that a reform agenda that is just an exercise in incrementalism is also nothing more than an exercise in futility'.
2. Richard Rosecrance: 'In certain respects if Greece or Spain did not exist, they would have to be invented. Their participation in the euro keeps the value of the currency down from $1.80 to $1.20 or $1.30 or so, thereby ensuring the success of German exports to the rest of the world.'
3. Brigid Laffan: 'as the Union intrudes more and more into domestic budgetary and public finance choices, can party politics in Europe adapt to a very different governance regime?'
4. Charles S. Maier: 'The British can imagine that their banks will suffice, the Germans their autos, but such comparative advantage can dissipate quickly. I’d as soon wager on Greek beaches.'
5. Georg Sørensen: 'a substantial part of the present euro crisis has less to do with European cooperation and more to do with member states that are fragile, ineffective, have serious corruption problems...'
6. Chris J. Bickerton - 'Populism, after all, is politics without policies; technocracy is policy without politics.'
7. Carlos Gaspar - 'In an enlarged “Euroland”, Germany’s pre-eminence could be balanced by a Catholic coalition led by France, Italy and Poland.'
8. Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos – 'we still live in an era in which the nationalist project is more seductive than any project of integration among nations'
9. Pawel Swieboda - 'no-one dares to ask the question if the euro is still a political project, as its founders tended to believe, or if it is today about nothing else than damage control'.
10. Claus Offe - 'Europe is not just needed as a defensive mechanism to prevent the weak being overpowered by the strong, who first administer an austerity cure without then providing the requisite support for recovery.'