„This event is organised within INDIDER project, supported by a grant of the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization,
CNCS - UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P4-PCE-2021-1878, within PNCDI III”
EURINT 2024 | Debating Europe: new approaches, action tools and integration scenarios
24-25 May, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi
The European Union has been a successful story for many decades, despite the crises it has faced over time, becoming
in years a pole of attraction for other European countries. In general, crises have generated a sense of deepening
integration, and the enlargements from EU6 to EU27 were seen as a natural dynamic of the "(re)integration" of the
European continent, strengthening, with each stage, the EU power and relevance in the international order. The
synergies between the deepening and the widening mechanisms encouraged to look for a federal future of the EU as an
“ever-closer union”, a “hard core” of regional and global cooperation, and as a real economic and political power.
New opportunities and challenges have emerged in 1990s, in the context of the political transformations in the Central
and Eastern Europe. For the countries from this “liberated” part of Europe, the accession to the EU has been identified
with their aspirations for freedom, democracy, prosperity and security, a definitive break from the hegemonic tendencies
of Russia. In the same logic of European unification, the Union has enlarged from the EU15 to the EU28. The integration
of diversity has been achieved based on the community method and on variable geometries, successfully applied to
previous enlargements.
However, an important transformation of the strategic vision of the future of the EU has occurred. Although maintaining
the federalist option, with this wave of enlargement, the federalist future of EU is no longer a widely shared dream and
the differentiated integration looks increasingly obvious.
Lately various crises and shocks which have hit the EU in the last two decades have shown the limits of the current
system. Additional pressures are generated by the prospect of the Union enlargement to the countries of the Eastern
neighborhood and the Western Balkans, which has become a priority in the foreign policy against the background of the
war in Ukraine. Therefore, an even more enlarged, but also a more diverse Union is foreshadowed in a timeframe, which
albeit not yet politically assumed, already requires a reconsideration of the EU's strategic agenda.
EURINT 2024 | Debating Europe: new approaches, action
tools and integration scenarios
24-25 May, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi
The European Union has been a successful story for many
decades, despite the crises it has faced over time, becoming in
years a pole of attraction for other European countries. In
general, crises have generated a sense of deepening
integration, and the enlargements from EU6 to EU27 were seen
as a natural dynamic of the "(re)integration" of the European
continent, strengthening, with each stage, the EU power and
relevance in the international order. The synergies between the
deepening and the widening mechanisms encouraged to look for
a federal future of the EU as an “ever-closer union”, a “hard
core” of regional and global cooperation, and as a real economic
and political power.
New opportunities and challenges have emerged in 1990s, in
the context of the political transformations in the Central and
Eastern Europe. For the countries from this “liberated” part of
Europe, the accession to the EU has been identified with their
aspirations for freedom, democracy, prosperity and security, a
definitive break from the hegemonic tendencies of Russia. In
the same logic of European unification, the Union has enlarged
from the EU15 to the EU28. The integration of diversity has
been achieved based on the community method and on variable
geometries, successfully applied to previous enlargements.
However, an important transformation of the strategic vision of
the future of the EU has occurred. Although maintaining the
federalist option, with this wave of enlargement, the federalist
future of EU is no longer a widely shared dream and the
differentiated integration looks increasingly obvious.
Lately various crises and shocks which have hit the EU in the
last two decades have shown the limits of the current system.
Additional pressures are generated by the prospect of the Union
enlargement to the countries of the Eastern neighborhood and
the Western Balkans, which has become a priority in the foreign
policy against the background of the war in Ukraine. Therefore,
an even more enlarged, but also a more diverse Union is
foreshadowed in a timeframe, which albeit not yet politically
assumed, already requires a reconsideration of the EU's
strategic agenda.
