Europe in Crisis: The History, the Players and the Stakes

Abstract

The post-1945 European movement was partly moulded by the interests of American corporate business, which supported multi-party democracy managed in ways that maintained strong checks on its political rivals, especially Soviet-style state socialism. The EU maintained the historical European pattern of a rough balance between a loose framework of rules and cultural understandings and a diversity of politico-economic tendencies in different parts of the continent. This was possible because it was a relatively sheltered arena hemmed in both east and west by the supporting and containing walls provided by the two main Cold War players. Since 1989 the surrounding ‘outworks’ of the EU in North Africa, Central Eurasia, and the Middle East have substantially crumbled. The EU’s stability is buttressed by the integrated Eurozone which partially compensates for the decline of socio-political integration as EU membership has increased; and by the interlocking effect of cross-cutting rivalries and collaborations within the EU.