The Epilogue traces the afterlives of West German debates about Heimat in post-reunification Germany. It shows how public debates about the concept over the past three decades have primarily revolved around three issues: popular desires for home in the face of economic demands for mobility and flexibility, questions around immigration and integration, and the ongoing question of left-wing engagement with or disavowal of Heimat. All three issues have clear connections to the earlier West German debates, even if memories of these connections have often been lost. While the Epilogue shows how attempts to define the Heimat concept from the political left have remained contested, it demonstrates a growing trend towards engagement in the most recent Heimat debates over the past decade. Disengagement with desires for home, many have argued, has proven self-defeating, while many immigrant groups themselves have expressed deep desires for home in new places and have often argued for engagement with Heimat.

This chapter examines the first systematic efforts to eliminate the Heimat concept. The chapter shows how they emerged in the early 1960s amidst a period of Cold War crisis. Expellee claims to a right to Heimat in the East lurched to the centre of the greatest foreign policy debate of the period and represented a major barrier to rapprochement with the Eastern bloc. Supporters of rapprochement took up two conflicting strategies in confronting expellee Heimat rhetoric. The first challenged how the expellee societies understood the concept, while the second involved arguing that desire for Heimat was inherently fascist. The chapter shows how other generational, demographic, and economic developments also shaped the anti-Heimat movement. While earlier focus on Heimat had been tied to its loss, long-term economic growth, completed reconstruction, and decline in mobility rates led earlier preoccupation with Heimat to ebb. A number of activists on the extra-parliamentary left, many of whom sought re-engagement in the 1970s, also described attachment to local Heimat as inherently exclusionary, reactionary, overly emotional, militarist, or a blockage to international revolutionary change.

Is there an alternative to EU dual decision-making regimes? The chapter advances the alternative model of federal union as distinct from the federal state.

The chapter identifies the types of crisis exploded in the 20210s and 2020s and the theories on EU decision-making.

How does the EU decide? The chapter introduces to the main decision-making regimes of the EU in order to prepare the reader for the following empirical chapter on the governance of the crises.

The growth of national sovereignty in the EU political process, due also to new enlargements, requires a multi-tier Europe with a federalist core.

The Russian aggression of Ukraine had dramatic effects on the energy and security policy of the EU. Those effects were mainly managed at the national level. The security and military challenge was left to NATO.

The two crises are directly compared because they represent two alternative solutions to the problem of economic decline. In both crises national governments played a crucial role.