Institute for Human Sciences

A political culture of total optimism has obscured one of the paradoxes of European unity: a constrained democracy, borne out of the experience of the devastating wars in the first half of the twentieth century, and aimed at suppressing pernicious populist instincts, has now become the source of new resentment. Coupled with the unintended consequences of the single currency, these are exceptional times indeed. And the challenges awaiting democracy are not about to get any easier, according to Stefan Auer.

The threat that the EU now faces is as deadly as the one that confronted the Habsburg Monarchy a hundred years ago, writes British diplomat Robert Cooper, one of the intellectual architects of EU foreign policy. But getting it right does not need a miracle.

Too big to fail? Too crisis-hardened to go under? The collapse of the Soviet Union has something to teach Europe’s politicians if another leap from the unthinkable to the inevitable is to be avoided in the case of the EU, argues Ivan Krastev.

The Ukraine-European Union summit, originally planned for 19 December, was to have brought talks on an Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU to a conclusion. However the conflict over the prosecution of Yuliya Tymoshenko has endangered the process, raising serious doubts about the European aspirations of the current Ukrainian leadership. The country’s future hangs in the balance, writes Tatiana Zhurzhenko.