The European Union has been struggling with a multilevel poly-crisis, weakening popular
support for European integration, over the past more than a decade. Political leaders
aim to reverse these dynamics through democratising and politicising the Union in
order to bring it closer to citizens. However, this runs counter to a trend of increasing
political alienation among the same citizens at the national level. This is a book
about troubled and troubling transformations in contemporary European societies and
politics, which generate fears across the continent. Fears of disintegration at the
European level, fears of disorder and instability at the national level, fears of
disorientation at the individual level, fears of becoming irrelevant at the global
level, and fears of the future that seems to be full of dangers and risks. The authors
give an overview of public debates about key challenges – regarding social inequalities,
demography, migration, the ecological debt, sustainable development, democracy, communication,
populism, or strategic sovereignty – behind these fears, and explain alternative responses
offered to them. They address university students in the first place, but also hope
to shape awareness in a broader public. Today’s fears, if ignored or left unanswered,
have a dangerous potential to evolve into a new political era of anxiety in Europe,
with a presumably devastating effect. But this is not inevitable. The future may not
be as doomed as it looks at first glance.