The politics of Europe 2004: solidarity and integration

The process of European integration has reached the limits of European solidarity—both within the member states and between them. Increasingly, Europeans are demonstrating reluctance to accept common rules, to recognise common values, to protect common interests, or to promote common objectives. Instead, Europeans appear to be expressing many different and yet interrelated forms of disaffection. Voter abstention is high, security cooperation is weak, economic confidence is low, and support for either European enlargement or institutional reform is vanishing. To respond to this crisis, European politicians need to manage expectations better, they need to accept responsibility for public policy problems, they need to explain the limits of what Europe can do, and they need to search for new formulas to meet different national challenges with common European institutions.