A vision for post-­crisis Europe: Towards what kind of Political Union?

Vienna 17/10 - 18/10/2013

The THESEUS Annual Conference 2013 took place in the Austrian Institute for International Affairs in Vienna 17-18 October.

Within the last few years a vital debate about the future of European integration has been launched notably regarding the issue of "political union". Under the pressure of the crisis, the issue of ‘finalité politique’ has again returned to the heart of academic and public debates. The German Chancellor Angela Merkel called countries to give up more powers to Europe “step by step” as way out of crisis. The French President François Hollande declared that he wanted to take a European initiative for a “economic government” and "political union" within two years. In contrast in the UK, a new debate on the repatriation of competences towards the nations has been launched.

In this context, the Conference brought together European academics and practitioners to discuss the concept of a European political union. While most of the academic and political debates had dealt with the consequences for the different policy fields or the institutional set-up of the Union, there had been only a few exchanges about national perceptions and differing understandings. In order to capture the ambiguous meanings and developments, besides different national perspectives the conference discussed conceptual and theoretical approaches. In doing so future strategies and roadmaps were identified.