Abstract. Today the European Union is in a systemic crisis. The main challenges are well known: Euro crisis underlined by insufficient competitiveness of the EU economy; migration crisis, which is feeding Euroscepticism and ultra-right radicalism; Brexit referendum that highlighted all the defects of the EU political system, primarily those related to the ideology of integration and identity issues. These external shocks have provoked a systemic crisis because, over the last ten years, the institutional and political system of the EU has considerably degraded. This article attempts to identify key negative trends in the development of this system which took place in the past decade: 1) the erosion of solidarity and the collapse of the “inevitable” integration ideology; 2) an increasing heterogeneity within the EU as a result of enlargement that limited potential of Europeanization; 3) reinforcement of the intergovernmental method of governance to the prejudice of a communitarian one; 4) an increasing gap between the image of the EU as an “omnipotent bureaucracy”, the scope of tasks, and modest resources; 5) growing legitimacy deficit and 6) the problem of leadership. On this basis, the paper provides a critical analysis of possible transformation scenarios for the institutional and political system of the European Union, an assessment of their probability, ensuing risks and opportunities. The paper concludes that the most possible option is a further development of various elements of flexible integration, which would transform the EU into a “core and periphery” system. Flexibility would allow combining the federalization of the EU core, and the current (or even lower) level of integration for those countries who do not want or cannot take new obligations.
Keywords: European Union, EU institutional system, EU political system, systemic crisis of the EU, flexible integration
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