The Europolitan papers

A joint EGPP-STG project led by Philippe Schmitter
Emeritus Professor
European University Institute

The Europolitan papers are a set of short essays resting on five assumptions:

(1) The European Union (EU) is currently facing a set of simultaneous crises that threaten its very existence, but also present an opportunity to reform itself;
(2) It (and the process of regional integration that it embodies) is worth saving because a return to authoritative decision-making only at the national (and in some cases, even the sub-national) level would leave the inhabitants of Europe much worse off;
(3) In order to do this, the EU cannot simply expand the variety, scope and magnitude of its policies as it has done in the past, but will have to change its existing institutions and form a “Euro-Polity” with its own resources and direct effect upon European citizens;
(4) This polity will only be able to legitimate itself by becoming more or, better said, differently democratic; and
(5) Given the diversity of political conditions in its member-states, this cannot be accomplished ‘all at once’ but only ‘by stealth,’ by gradually and sequentially introducing relatively modest reforms in the rules of the game and the rules to make the rules of the game.

In these initial fifteen essays, Philippe Schmitter has engaged in the task of exploring ‘what might be done’ in order to avoid the threat to the EU’s existence and to take advantage of this present opportunity for reform… with little or no attention as to how or even whether any of them might be done. His hope is that they will be criticized and supplemented by others who know much more about the actual politics of the EU and who will transform these initial speculations into constructive and feasible proposals for the sort of gradual reforms that are needed not just for its survival but for its transformation into the world’s first, largest and most complex, supra-national liberal democratic polity.

The project kick-off took place in 2022 under the aegis of the pan-EUI interdisciplinary ‘Cluster TD21 Transnational Democracy in the 21st Century’ organised jointly by the Schuman Centre and the School of Transnational Governance’s Programme on Transnational Democracy. It has been designed as an ongoing series of seminars with presentations of one or several of the Europolitan papers by Philippe Schmitter and other contributors to the project, followed by commentaries and discussions: 

Browse all the Europolitan papers here

Readers are welcome to send comments to egpp@eui.eu. Comments will be reviewed before publication below and will include the name of the author.