The Existential Crisis of the European Union

In this paper, I put forward four theses and one coda. The theses can be summarized as follows: Thesis one (section B): Five crises, not one. The European Union is not undergoing one crisis, but is instead suffering several simultaneous, interrelated, and intertwined crises—crises, which are global, not exclusively European. Put differently, the subprime crisis turned the economic, financial, fiscal, macroeconomic, and political structure weaknesses of the Western socio-economic order into at least five major crises.