Before the Great War of 1914–18 ended, the successor states of four Eurasian empires split into conservative, liberal and revolutionary camps; ideological battles that had been waged for nearly a century were resumed like trench warfare in the streets of cities, in diplomatic salons, in the pages of broadsheets and in parliamentary halls. By the middle of the 1930s these ideological battles had again brought forth a civil war, this time in Spain, which came as an augury, tragic and bloody, conjoining the past, present and future in a grim garden of forking paths. This was the setting after the Second World War in which some western European nations sought to lay the basis for what would come to be called ‘an ever closer union’, whilst a rather different ‘union’ settled upon their eastern neighbours under Soviet rule. The processes of unification in eastern and western Europe were reactions and stimuli to the diminution of European power during the post-war period.

In 2000 the European Union (EU) entered the new millennium after two substantial treaty reforms, those of Maastricht and of Amsterdam, that had significantly expanded its mission and objectives, capacity for internal and external action and democratic credentials. Two fundamental treaty objectives, Economic and Monetary Union and the Area of Freedom Security and Justice (AFSJ), had been added, with the first resulting in the successful introduction of the euro on 1 January 2001 and the second equipping it in time with possibilities for action in a common European response to the new challenges of global terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that was unprecedented in terms of the range of instruments used.

Since its very beginnings, a central narrative of European integration has been that only a form of profound cooperation between the European states will allow the promotion of prosperity and social security. The narrative of prosperity is one of the oldest and most constant meta-arguments of regional European integration. The Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 already stated that the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) would contribute to ‘raising living standards’.1 In the European Union’s (EU’s) self-portrayal, prosperity, growth and employment are still among its hardly questioned and fundamental goals, as former President of the Commission Emanuel Barroso put it: ‘Today the raison d’être of our Union is also the same that was there sixty years ago: peace, democracy, to be freed from fears, mistrust and divisions, to share security, stability and prosperity.’

On 3 October 1990, something very strange happened. The European Community (EC) expanded without formally acquiring a new member. The reason for this was the reunification of Germany – on this day, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) acceded to the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). As a result, the FRG gained five new federal states, which then also became part of the EC.

In 2020, ‘strategic autonomy’ became a buzzword in Brussels. The phrase catches different meanings, ranging from the self-sufficiency of the European Union (EU) to the management of interconnectedness in a globalised world. In EU parlance, ‘strategic autonomy’ is used in a sense that aims to be different from the traditional concepts of sovereignty and power, but should, however, not be read in contradiction with free trade. ‘Strategic autonomy’ seems to have been articulated first by President of the European Council Charles Michel in two speeches in September 2020. But in reacting to the clichés that US President Donald Trump voiced against the EU in January 2017, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had already expressed her desire for European autonomy in declaring that ‘we Europeans have our fate in our own hands’. French President Emmanuel Macron has regularly used the related concept of ‘European sovereignty’ since his speech on Europe at the Sorbonne in 2017. Regardless of the origin and meaning of the phrase, ‘strategic autonomy’ touches therefore on a perennial motif of European integration that largely predates the 2010s, namely the place and role of the EU in a globalising (or globalised) world.

The decade-long process of European monetary integration has been the most ambitious, and probably the most controversial, project of its type.1

The Eurozone crisis of the early 2010s reinforced the scepticism toward monetary integration experienced not only by populist politicians but also by disillusioned academics. Belke and Verheyen, for example, argued in 2012 that: ‘It is time to admit that under the prevailing structure and membership, the euro area simply does not work successfully.’

The ‘European project’ at first sight might seem a ploddingly pragmatic, even technocratic, instrument for achieving harmonisation between its member states. As such, it is habitually contrasted with the ‘nation-states’ which make up its members, and which, unlike the office blocks of Brussels and Strasbourg, are seen as historical communities (‘nations’) as well as states, united in their shared historical memories, language and culture. This unproblematic acceptance of the ‘nation-state’ makes for a skewed comparison when used in a problematisation of ‘Europe’. There seems to be little that Europe can offer by way of a common cultural bonding agent; at best, there is a notion of ‘unity in diversity’ (the official motto of the European Union (EU) since 2000). Indeed, the Treaty of Maastricht included a cultural paragraph which uneasily balanced the requirements of that cultural diversity and unity. The uncertainty concerning a common cultural basis is even seen as a characteristic weakness in the European project, something that deprives it of a centripetal, cohesive force. Its absence means that the EU is perpetually and self-consumingly in quest of a self-definition and, in Cris Shore’s formulation, lacks an identifying focus ‘to capture the loyalty and allegiance of its would-be citizens; to transform nationals into self-recognising European subjects’. Shore has also traced, in the mode of cultural anthropology, the corporate culture of the EU institutions, rather than analysing a cultural history or cultural agenda informing the European project.

It is 9 October 2001 and one of the authors, Thedvall, has been working for a month as a stagiaire/researcher at the Directorate General (DG) of Employment and Social Affairs (DG EMPL). It is morning, and she is taking part in an induction course at the DG EMPL to become familiarised with the European Commission, the DG, and their ways of working. Induction courses are frequently held at the DG and the European Commission in general. There is a constant influx of people starting to work as fonctionnaires with permanent positions or arriving as detached national experts (DNEs) or stagiaires staying for a few months or a few years. The influx is matched only by the constant stream of farewell parties and goodbye drinks. People move in and out of the city all the time. Brussels is a city where friends constantly leave. The room, a typical meeting room in the DG with grey/blueish chairs, tables, floors and walls, is filled with a mix of people of different nationalities, positions and levels, from directors to trainees/stagiaires. The day starts out with the Director General welcoming us and talking about the European Union (EU) project. As Director General of DG EMPL, he is particularly pleased that the EU project has expanded to include social issues, moving the EU closer towards a federation. He is convinced that, within this decade or the next, the EU will become a proper federal union with working political processes and a European Parliament as important as its member states’ parliaments.

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.

In 1832, the Prussian novelist Gotthilf August von Maltitz published a curious epistolary novella, the Journey among the Ruins of Old Europe in the Year 2830. Telling of a journey of an American tourist to Europe to visit its ruins and learn about its past, von Maltitz meant this to be a ‘serious and satirical’ work. In it, Europe was a devastated land, invaded and despoiled by hordes from the East, the Russians first and foremost. Its peoples had been easily subdued because of their weakness after centuries of decadence, brought about by their materialism and individualism. In the novella, the comparison between Europe and the United States was a grim one indeed. Von Maltitz’s text, now a forgotten literary curiosity, was rather unusual in its day, and few of its readers would have seen in it a serious foreshadowing of European decline. In truth, the nineteenth century was an age of unprecedented economic, military and cultural expansion for Europe. Admittedly, Alexis de Tocqueville claimed that its nations had attained the acme of their power and that Russia and the United States, ‘called by a secret design of Providence’, would one day hold in their hands the destinies of the world. Yet few others, at that time and for the best part of the century, were so prescient.

This chapter analyses how the United Nations (UN) as an intergovernmental organisation, has shaped the functioning of the European Union (EU) and its member states in global governance over the years. The EU is often seen, both by scholars and by practitioners, as a special, even unique actor in the UN context, characterised by high levels of support, cooperation, institutionalisation and formalisation.

This chapter approaches uniqueness not as a mantra, but as a question of empirical validation, by zooming in on the UN General Assembly (UNGA). This organ embodies the principle of universality by bringing together all UN members and, in addition, allowing a wide variety of observers to participate in its work, including the EU. While the latter’s functioning is well-documented, there remain some blind spots to be addressed, such as the UNGA’s decision to grant the European Economic Community (EEC) observer status in October 1974.