EU Resources in Times of Crisis

«L’homme n’est que un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c’est un roseau pensant», Pascal wrote . Is awareness of the European Union's resources being lost today? The aim of this research is to estimate the degree of institutional development of the European Union through a literature analysis of the last twenty-five years and through citizen interviews. In recent years, the international order has been crisscrossed by break lines, challenged, and subjected to transformative forces: the war in Ukraine, the decline of the US-led international order, tensions within transatlantic relations, climate change, energy issues, migration, and technology all contribute to explaining these dynamics. This current situation is impacting the European Union institutionally. What is the European Union’s identity, role, power, and resources today in the new international turmoil? What is the European Union’s architecture? What is its constitution and how has it evolved over the last quarter century? Twentyfive years ago Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa underlined: ‘The process of European unification is the strongest positive legacy this century leaves to humanity in the sphere of political order. It demonstrates that human society can, through peaceful means, transition from the state of nature to civilization, even in a field - relations between sovereign states - in which that transition had not yet succeeded, or had succeeded only in limited contexts (Switzerland) or in particular circumstances (the United States of America). The more: ‘Today we can say that the truly revolutionary event of our century - the 20th century - was the creation of supranational powers in that part of the world where the nation state was born. […] It was a slow revolution, steeped in paperwork and procedures, disseminated in the technicalities of bureaucrats. Federico Fabbrini notes today: ‘EU Member States clash on what they wish the EU to be – with alternative visions of polity, market, and autocracy increasingly competing between themselves’. The more: ‘If therefore the EU can plausibly be regarded as having a constitution, the consequential question is how to assess the EU constitution’s operation in time of war […] As the EU for the first time faces the reality of war, how has its constitutional structure of government responded to the threat of hard power? […] The Conference on the Future of Europe advanced a number of recommendations to improve the EU’s effectiveness and legitimacy. Crucially, the Conference pleaded for reopening the discussion about the EU constitution on the understanding that a constitution may help to be more precise as well as involve citizens and agree on the rules of the decision-making process. It is worth assessing how the current EU constitution (small c) has fared when measured by the ordinary aims of a Constitution (capital C). Fabbrini Federico, The EU Constitution in Time of War. Legal Responses to Russia’s Aggression Against Ukraine, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2025 Padoa-Schioppa Tommaso, Europa, forza gentile. Cosa ci ha insegnato l’avventura europea, Il Mulino, Bologna 2001 Portinaro Pier Paolo, Il labirinto delle istituzioni nella storia europea, Il Mulino, Bologna 2007