Authors meet critics panel: How Europe Survives

Abstract

This session brings together Catherine De Vries and Alexandros Kentikelenis to discuss their new book How Europe Survives, which challenges the familiar image of the EU as a fragile, half-finished machine lurching from one crisis to the next. Recasting Europe as a living organism – messy, plural and incomplete, yet resilient – the book argues that the Union’s distinctive strength lies in its ‘adaptive power’: its capacity to improvise, recalibrate and reshape cooperation under permanent stress, from the eurozone crisis and Brexit to the pandemic and war on its borders. Rather than telling a triumphalist story, De Vries and Kentikelenis probe the costs, limits and inequalities of this model while advancing a new benchmark of ‘effective sovereignty’ for evaluating the European project. At the ECPR Standing Group on the EU conference, the authors will engage in conversation with three prominent scholars of European politics: Theresa Kuhn, Tarik Abou-Chadi and Giorgio Malet. Together, they will debate the book’s implications for public support for European integration, as well as the evolving role of the EU in a rapidly shifting world order. The session will speak to scholars interested in integration theory, democracy and legitimacy, and Europe’s place in global politics.