Europe under Stress

For the last seven years, the financial and economic crisis has been the focus of EU policies, but the crisis has not yet been fully overcome. In the meantime, ‘exit’ has become a common term, be it with regard to Greece (‘Grexit’) or the United Kingdom (‘Brexit’), and constitutes a threat to integration as such. Other countries seem to have split the consensus on what democracy means in Europe. External challenges are adding to the critical agenda of the European Union. The outbreak of the conflict with Russia over Ukraine was an unpleasant surprise to the Europeans and has become a threat to peace. And this new uncertainty is also affecting well-established partnerships, like the transatlantic relationship with the United States. Last but not least, Europe has to rethink its engagement in global affairs on the whole, and its Mediterranean and development policy in particular.

CIFE has launched a debate on such topics among both the members of its research team and colleagues from various European countries. In this book, they present their new series of policy papers on those issues, which were written between 2015 and 2016.