Technology Fast Tracking A Multifaceted European Integration

The European integration process has been characterized by a series of setbacks, which have then been followed by important advances. The latest setbacks were represented by the migrant crisis of 2015, the Brexit referendum in 2016, resurfacing euro re-denomination risks in 2018-19 and finally the Covid-induced crisis in 2020. All these events occurred while internationalism was deteriorating, amid the victory of an isolationist US president, mounting trade and geopolitical tensions between major economies, the ongoing balkanisation of global supply and value chains and an underlying technological conflict between the US and China (in which Russia and the EU were inevitably engaged). The resulting polarisation of the world into spheres of influence dominated by the US and China amounts to what has been labelled Cold War 2