A battle is raging for the future of Europe. It is a battle about its shape and direction, its contours and elements, its principles, values and operating rules, ultimately about its soul. It is about who it represents and whether it delivers – and to whom – what it has promised. We have emerged from a terrible economic and social crisis, alive but scarred, divided but still together. During the crisis we surprised ourselves by our difficulty in arriving at the right decisions at the right time, but also by the fact that when push came to shove, we did manage to find the political will to keep the project going – “whatever it takes”.

During the crisis, we realized that the ship had design faults and was no longer sea-worthy in stormy waters, and diligently started the repairs. We set out an ambitious reform agenda for ourselves, staking out the issues that needed to be addressed, even if our starting points were often widely different and we did not at all agree on the right solutions. We made progress during the most difficult time, but always hamstrung by delicate political realities in our countries. Our fight has been on two fronts: confronting the acute problems that the crisis made all too evident; and at the same time battling against an all-consuming tide of populism that has captured the attention of too many Europeans by correctly identifying some of the urgent problems while offering all the wrong solutions.

It is now crunch time. As Europe moves beyond its immediate crisis, the broader questions linking together issues of economics, institutions, security and democracy now all converge to the question of the general direction the EU will take. The different scenarios that have been discussed in the last few years span a wide range: from the breakup of the eurozone with the corresponding fundamental reshaping of the European Union, to “plodding along” with small incremental changes to existing institutional arrangements, all the way to something leading us to the federalist dream.