The Future of Europe

While the ambitious objectives outlined in the EU’s Green Deal aim at making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, national implementation greatly varies depending on local geographies, history, culture, economics, and politics. This book analyses Member States’ and EU neighbours’ national efforts to combat climate change. It subsequently draws on these factors to highlight local challenges, tensions, and opportunities on the road towards climate neutrality. In the context of inter-country dependencies following Russia’s war against Ukraine, it addresses strategic questions regarding EU integration, the transformation of our economies, the reduction of energy dependencies, and public perception of the above. The book also makes concrete recommendations, in various policy areas, on how individual countries and the EU as a whole should deal with the climate crisis.

This open access book provides in-depth and comparative analyses of how young people in peripheral areas in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania perceive EU citizenship. It also informs the reader about the challenges faced by EU Youth Dialogue projects that aim at promoting active (EU) citizenship in these areas and it offers context-specific recommendations for local, regional, national and European policymakers and people working with young people. The contributions are based on new qualitative data collected within the framework of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence at Leipzig University. It will be of interest to practitioners and scholars working on Europe and the EU, citizenship and the promotion of an active EU citizenship beyond urban centres.

This book addresses a range of aspects essential to a better understanding of Slovenia's 20 years in the EU and its exposure to the European integration process, including changes to its policies on e.g. competitiveness, industry, innovation, foreign policy and diplomacy, security and defense, but also its relations to neighboring countries, its experience with European elections, and different forms of Euroscepticism and citizens' trust in EU institutions. Subsequent chapters explore how Slovenia has been coping with the Maastricht criteria and EU law more generally in its polities and politics, benefitting from EU funds, and defending its language as an official language of the EU. In concise contributions, the authors – with diverse scholarly backgrounds and hailing from Slovenia and abroad – assess these aspects and share their perspectives on Slovenia's experiences after 20 years of full EU membership.

This open access book deals with the backsliding of the rule of law in Poland and Hungary as one of the main problems of the EU. What began as a national phenomenon has become a general threat for the EU because the respect for the rule of law is a prerequisite for all other values of the EU enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union. Media coverage and scholarly publications on these developments mainly focus on backsliding governments and judicial decisions concerning the issue. This book aims to inform the debate by adding another perspective and providing a broader view. Drawing on a comprehensive collection of parliamentary debates, we explore how MPs in Poland, Hungary, but also the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania referred to the rule of law from 1990 to 2021 and how their narratives differed across parties, countries and time.

This book aims to explore the perceptions of the EU integration by the young population in its “periphery”. It thereby bridges the gap between perceptions studies, youth studies, and the center-periphery conceptual framework. The chapters in the volume make use of data generated from focus group meetings with university students aged between 18-30 (which is the age range generally used by the European Social Survey to group young citizens) in Romania, Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, Georgia and Turkiye.

The book deals with the urgent need for the EU to position itself globally in the wake of Brexit, a rapidly worsening climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, an aggressive Russia, and an ever more assertive China. After 60 years of intensive navel gazing that focused on institutional design more than world politics, the EU is now forced to defend its liberal democratic values, which have come under attack from inside and outside the European integration project. Moreover, Realpolitik is back on the agenda. Europe’s content negligence of defense matters in the past few decades has been revealed by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.