The Limits of Europe: Identities, Spaces, Values

In his fifth-century BCE chronicle of the Graeco-Persian Wars, Herodotus describes a challenge that European scholars have faced for two and a half millennia (Drace-Francis, 2013: 1). Since Antiquity, discussions of just what ‘Europe’ is, descriptively and normatively, have not been resolved and consensus has been reached that multiple ‘Europes’ exist. Recent events in Europe, though, suggest that while the boundaries of Europe are, and will forever remain, quite unknown, the boundaries of EUrope are becoming identifiable.‘Europe’ has long been an unsatisfactory metonymic synecdoche for the post-war European project, in the form of the ECSC, EEA, EC, EEC, and now EU. ‘EUrope’ distinguishes the specific political project, whose boundaries are not merely a question of academic curiosity or policy making but a source of significant discontent, anxiety and violence in contemporary Europe. This special edition has been drawn together to study the manifold aspects of how EUrope’s multiple boundaries are emerging.EUrope is changing. Partly in response to internal anxieties over rapid integration and expansion, as witnessed in the Dutch and French rejections of the proposed European Constitution in 2005, and partly in response to external pressures and responses by EU and national governments, namely the Great Recession, austerity and the migration crisis, EUrope’s changes are manifesting. The most visible manifestations have been Brexit; the rise of Euroscepticism and illiberal democracies;
the eurozone crisis and economic disparities across the EU; the immigration and asylum crisis; and mounting perceptions of a democratic deficit and a legitimacy crisis of EU institutions. As this special edition argues, these have not just affected national and EU-level statecraft. They are causing significant shifts in the discourse of Europeanisation, integration and dis-integration of the EUropean project.