Age of Austerity

contradictions of capitalism and democracy

pp. 273-286

in: Gérard Delanty, Formations of European modernity, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

The project of European integration has been marked by many shifts in its more than five decade history. This history can of course be viewed as having a much longer span since the foundation of the EU. The general dominant tendency both in academic discussion and in popular opinion has been to see in that project a progressive movement towards unity and alongside this an emphasis on continuity over discontinuity. The EU has certainly become embedded in its member states, which have been irreversibly transformed as a result of European integration, and the various enlargements of the EU can be seen as a continuation of a project of systemic integration that began in the post-Second World War period. The crisis that escalated in 2012, with the prospect of Greece's exit from the EU at least as a possible development, suggests a shift of a different nature and the possibility of a rupture that calls into question a narrative of continuity and one of progressive integration based upon the institutionalization of solidarity.