Imagining possible futures

Abstract

Abstract In the wake of the pandemic, the EU image has shifted from the guardian of fiscal discipline to the guarantor of resilience and the provider of backstops (resources and guidance) to withstand catastrophic risks. The EU seems to have regained a sufficient degree of ‘polity consensus’, i.e., a diffuse support for the elementary foundations of a polity, i.e., the desirability of both its existence and its point and purpose. The challenge remains, hoverer, to provide the process of ‘an ever closer union’ with a coherent sense of direction. Climate change and the widespread social insecurity of EU citizens are the obvious points of departure for elaborating novel, forward-looking visions, capable of combining the twin goals of sustainable prosperity and social justice.