Vol. 19 · No. 2 · Issue 59 · Summer 2001 · pp. 1-21 (21)

Michael Werz

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Abstract

I. Introduction

Recent debates about the future of the European Union have focused in large part on institutional reforms, the deficit of democratic legitimacy, and the problem of economic and agrarian policies. As important as these issues may be, the most crucial question at the moment is not whether Europe will prevail as a union of nations or as a thoroughly integrated federal structure. What is of much greater concern is the fact that political structures and their corresponding political discourses have lagged far behind the social changes occurring in European societies. The pivotal transformation of 1989 has not been grasped intellectually or politically, even though its results are increasingly visible in both the east and west.