During and after the financial crisis of 2008, the EU did not act in unity, notably when addressing that crisis, at least not according to French President Emmanuel Macron in his grand speech on Europe in April 2024. Over the last few years, by contrast, he claims the European Union has demonstrated financial unity by agreeing on common debt and recovery plans to tackle the consequences of the pandemic, and strategic unity by collectively procuring vaccines and reaching agreements on energy and military support to Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s war of aggression. Unity is not only a frequent keyword in solemn speeches, but also in central policy documents – such as the new Commission’s political guidelines and in the European Council’s Strategic Agenda for the new political cycle – and it is often used in combination with the EU’s strength and capacity to act.
Thu Nguyen describes the prevailing narrative concerning the EU’s unity, which ‘suggests that the more united the bloc is, the stronger it becomes against adversaries and the brighter its future appears’. But the concept of unity remains strikingly ambiguous, the author notes, despite its centrality in European rhetoric. According to her analysis, the EU’s unity rests on both a core of rules and procedures and a minimum set of common values. It thus has both a functional and a normative dimension, but Nguyen argues that defining the Union’s shared values has become more challenging since the European elections in 2024. In a world increasingly shaped by global power dynamics, the author concludes, one of the key issues is therefore whether there will be a ‘strong enough leadership to hold the bloc together’.
This essay is part of the volume “Key Concepts for the Future of the EU”, edited by Patricia Wadensjö and Bernd Parusel, published by the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies (SIEPS).
Photo: CC Mauro Sbicego, Source: Unsplash