6 - Moderately Failing Forward: The EU in the Years 2004–2019

Summary

In the history of European integration, the years after 2004 have been characterised by three main processes: the dialectic of deepening and broadening, the unfolding and impact of major crises, and new types and levels of European politicisation. This chapter aims to develop a perspective on how these three contemporary historical processes relate to the longer-term process of European integration. I claim that the enlarged European Union (EU) of the early twenty-first century may have been moderately failing forward when managing its numerous crises, but it has been able neither to substantially counter the fallout from repeated crises, nor to meaningfully reverse internal processes of socio-economic and increasingly also political divergence. In global comparison, the failings of the EU have clearly been relative rather than catastrophic. At the same time, the steps the EU has taken in these years – to counter crises, integrate and democratise – would need to be assessed as rather moderate precisely because internal challenges have been mounting amidst a worsening external environment.