Building up European leadership – an assessment of the recent process

Europe is in need of a new leadership capacity able to recreate stronger European unity in the external and internal fronts. Otherwise, anti-European forces will increase their influence and presence in European governments and EU institutions with large implications for the direction of European integration.

This will be the central concern in making a first short assessment of the recent process of building European leadership capacity for the next five years to come (2014-2019). This assessment will particularly focus on the choice of the President of the European Commission, of the President of the European Council and, finally of the members of the European Commission.

This article forms part of an issue of Challenge Europe called 'Challenges and new beginnings: Priorities for the EU’s new leadership' as the launch of a new EU institutional cycle 2014-2019 began.