Nation states sometimes have trouble maintaining the legitimacy of their governments and regimes. It's even more difficult for a supranational organization like the EU.
To me it's distressing that the dangers of emotional nationalism that inspired the creation of the EU are apparent now as threats to the survival of international cooperation. Do your students of European history recognize history repeating itself?
Crisis for Europe as trust hits record low
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.
The First Edition ofWhat You Need to Know: Teaching Toolsis now available from the publisher
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To me it's distressing that the dangers of emotional nationalism that inspired the creation of the EU are apparent now as threats to the survival of international cooperation. Do your students of European history recognize history repeating itself?
Crisis for Europe as trust hits record low
Public confidence in the European Union has fallen to historically low levels in the six biggest EU countries, raising fundamental questions about its democratic legitimacy more than three years into the union's worst ever crisis, new data shows.
After financial, currency and debt crises, wrenching budget and spending cuts, rich nations' bailouts of the poor, and surrenders of sovereign powers over policymaking to international technocrats, Euroscepticism is soaring to a degree that is likely to feed populist anti-EU politics and frustrate European leaders' efforts to arrest the collapse in support for their project…
The findings… represent a nightmare for Europe's leaders, whether in the wealthy north or in the bailout-battered south, suggesting a much bigger crisis of political and democratic legitimacy…
EU leaders are aware of the problem, utterly at odds over what to do about it, and have yet to come up with any coherent policy proposals addressing the mismatch between the pooling of economic and fiscal powers and the democratic mandate deemed necessary to underpin such radical policy shifts.
José Manuel Barroso, the European commission president, said… the European "dream" was under threat from a "resurgence of populism and nationalism" across the EU…
Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk… [said] "We can't escape this dilemma: how do you get a new model of sovereignty so that limited national sovereignty in the EU is not dominated by the biggest countries like Germany… "
Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed.
The First Edition ofWhat You Need to Know: Teaching Toolsis now available from the publisher
