Patterns of Disintegration

Paraphrasing Marx, one could say that a spectre is hunting Europe –the spectre of disintegration. The crisis of the Monetary Union, which in the intentions of its creators had to be the cherry on the cake of the single market and the seed of political integration, seems to call into question the core assumption of more than half a century of European integration history: the (functionalist) idea that economic integration would be self-sustaining and would ultimately lead to the emergence of a political community. This essay presents evidence suggesting that the current crisis is not an accidental snag, but the collapse of the ideological architecture of Europe, showing that the disintegrating dynamics threatening the EU are structurally determined.