Europäische Union - In defence of Europe: can the European project be saved?

This book has travelled a great deal before reaching publication. The ideas contained in it have been tried out with many people from the world of policy and politics, business, journalism, and academia, and with different audiences across Europe and beyond. They were enriched and further developed as a result. The decision to write the book goes back to the Cyril Foster Lecture I was honoured to give in November 2014 at the University of Oxford. In my young and not so young days in Oxford, I attended several of these annual lectures and learned a great deal. But it had never crossed my mind that one day I would be asked to rise to the challenge. Some people, including notably my editors at Oxford University Press, suggested that I should try to turn the lecture into a book. It has been some journey, but here it is. Although most of the work is new, I have also drawn from previous writings, especially from a long essay that was published earlier in 2014 by Policy Network in London and was very quickly translated and circulated in French, German, Greek, Polish, and Spanish by leading European think tanks: a small proof that the European public space is slowly but surely taking shape.

I belong to the privileged minority of Europeans that has been steadily growing in numbers for years for whom open borders and regional integration have literally shaped their lives. I have lived and worked in different countries and have been travelling constantly. It has felt as if Europe was becoming small in many ways, although still highly diverse. Europeanization for this privileged minority has been the regional version of globalization, only much more so since Europe has gone far beyond than any other region of the world not only in breaking down national barriers but also in searching for ways to manage jointly the interdependence that came as the result. Yet, I have always been acutely aware of the fact that my way of life was not at all typical of most of my fellow Europeans. Now, I fear that some of the things we have come to consider as given not only for the privileged minority but for Europe as a whole may no longer be so.

Athens has been my home base for several years. And it has felt like being in a state of siege during the various peaks of the economic crisis and more recently the refugee crisis that came one on top of the other. But again, I escaped regularly and in various directions. Oddly enough, the two countries I know best, Greece and the UK, are nowhere near the European mainstream and each one for very different reasons. Does this make me an untypical observer of the European scene? It is not for me to judge. Perhaps, I have been sufficiently Europeanized although, hopefully, not in the bland manner the term is usually meant to imply. The last part of the book was written on the other side of the Atlantic in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I came as visiting professor to teach a graduate course at the Harvard Kennedy School on Europe in crisis: so much to talk about. Distance offers a certain perspective on things, and I was fortunate enough to enjoy that luxury from a very special observation post.

In my long European journey, professional and otherwise, I have made many debts which I shall never be able to pay back in their entirety. After all, I come from a country that has become notorious for its debts. Let me at least acknowledge some of my own. I was privileged to have mentors who were intellectual powerhouses, people who guided me in the early stages of my academic career and taught me a great deal: Hedley Bull, (Lord) Ralf Dahrendorf, and Susan Strange. I have had trusted friends with whom I have been exchanging views on Europe for decades: (Lord) William Wallace and (Dame) Helen Wallace. And I have had the privilege of engaging in numerous enlightening conversations with people at the centre stage of European politics, Jos-Manuel Barroso, (Vicomte) tienne Davignon, Enrico Letta, Mario Monti, and Herman Van Rompuy among others.