Keeping Europeans together. Assessing the state of EU cohesion

Rethink: Europe is an initiative of the European Council on Foreign Relations and Stiftung Mercator. The project examines the underlying forces shaping European cohesion and the continent’s capacity to act on the global stage. Rethink: Europe offers spaces to think through and discuss Europe’s strategic challenges. It does this by inviting thought leaders and policy practitioners from national capitals, the European institutions, as well as from outside Europe to reconsider and reflect upon European integration and exchange new ideas and forward thinking on Europe.

As part of this initiative the ECFR published a new tool called the 'EU Cohesion Monitor' in May 2016. The EU Cohesion Monitor is a quantitative index to assess the willingness of the 28 member states of the European Union and their societies for joint action and cooperation.

The ECFR published a report in September 2016, 'Keeping Europeans together. Assessing the state of EU cohesion'.

Contents:

+ Making sense of Europe's cohesion challenge (Josef Janning)
+ Austria: Failing to fulfil its potential (Arnold Kammel)
+ Belgium: The reliable European (Simon Desplanque)
+ Bulgaria: Supporting further cohesion (Marin Lessenski)
+ Croatia: Suffering from European short-sightedness (Lukas Orešković)
+ Cyprus: A story of crisis (Hüseyin Silman)
+ Czech Republic: Sending mixed signals (Viktor Bartovic)
+ Denmark: it's complicated (Christine Nissen)
+ Estonia: Independence and Interdependence (Viljar Veebel)
+ Finland: Pro-European, to an extent (Tuomas Iso-Markku)
+ France: A leader without followers (Martin Quencez)
+ Germany: Getting used to leadership (Julian Rappold)
+ Greece: Enduring forced cohesion (George N. Tzogopoulos)
+ Hungary: The EU's troublemaker (Zsuzsanna Vegh)
+ Ireland: Supporting integration (Andrew Gilmore)
+ Italy: Stepping up the plate (Giovanni Fedele)
+ Latvia: Becoming European (Ilvia Bruge)
+ Lithuania: Searching for security (Laurynas Jonavicius)
+ Luxembourg: Comfortably cohesive (Martine Huberty)
+ Malta: Coherence in divergence (Daniel Mainwaring)
+ Netherlands: Anti-Brussels, not Anti-EU (Niels van Willigen)
+ Poland: "Good change", bad change (Adam Balcer)
+ Portugal: Continuing to integrate (Livia Franco)
+ Romania: Performing and conforming (Robin Ivan Capar)
+ Slovakia: Policy over participation (Teodor Gyelnik)
+ Slovenia: Being a good European (Marko Lovec)
+ Spain: Facing a test of maturity (Alvaro Imbernon)
+ Sweden: Influential and pragmatic (Bjorn Fagersten)
+ United Kingdom: Checking out (Luigi Scazzieri)
+ How to capture cohesion: a methological note (Cristoph Klavehn)
Not every EU country is on the path to strong EU cohesion, like Luxembourg, for example. The EU Cohesion Monitor makes clear that a source of cohesion in one country may be a cause for its decline in another. This is why attempting to establish an overarching and all-encompassing cohesion narrative for the EU would be missing the point entirely.

The essays in this publication perfectly reflect the diversity of European cohesion. They provide the national context and personal assessments of the state of cohesion from representatives of the EU member states. The contributions, written by 28 analysts and EU observers from across the continent, offer a qualitative interpretation of the quantitative findings collected by Josef Janning and his team at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

This volume also includes the essay, 'Making sense of Europe’s Cohesion challenge' by Josef Janning, which seeks to explain the original findings of the Cohesion Monitor, and a methodological note to explain how all data for the project has been collected and used.

ECFR: EU Cohesion Monitor http://www.europeansources.info/record/eu-cohesion-monitor/

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