Perennial tensions in the EU integration process.
This lecture given at the University of Economics in Vienna offers a whirlwind tour of the perennial tensions in the EU integration process. First, it provides a brief historical sketch of the deepening and widening of the EU, time and again associated with diverse views on common policy requirements and national interests and competencies. Second, it reflects on the undercurrent of integration scepticism and populist anti-EU sentiment, which still run strong in spite of the many new challenges at a common EU level calling for a better arrangement of competencies, decision making powers, and budgetary room of manoeuvre. Concluding, the lecture lays out a medium-term agenda for the EU at both the international and the domestic level to anchor it as a place of stability in a troubled world.