In 2010, the Eurozone became the epicenter of the global crisis. The vulnerability of Europe appears linked to the specific institutional arrangements organising monetary, financial and budgetary policies and their misalignment with the socio-economic foundations of the Eurozone. It is also associated with European integration theory’s blind spots due to its disregard for political economy. The panel seeks to deepen the understanding of European integration through a critical examination of the social, economic, political, intellectual and cultural processes revealed by the current crisis and delineate competing imagined European recoveries.

Durand and Keucheyan examine the role of financial hegemony in preventing the emergence of a coherent state form at the European level. Andersson discusses the centrality of foresight exercises as a form of governance to European integration in general and in its neoliberal phase leading up to and seemingly beyond the European crisis. Petit discusses the European misjudgement of global transformations over the past two decades. It points out the necessity to reassess the European project along the lines of a New Deal that clearly departs from the Lisbon Agenda around the turn of the Millennium and the recent Europe 2020 agendas. Belfrage explores the ongoing process of contestation and re-legitimation of the European neoliberal project of integration at the national level. Through a comparative case study of Greece, Ireland and the control case of Iceland, he points to the social dynamics favouring an illegitimate – thus fragile - status quo.