EU scenarios for 2027

The Elcano Royal Institute is a think-tank for international and strategic studies that analyses world events and trends from a Spanish, European and global perspective.

The Elcano Royal Institute's Working Papers are longer documents of an academic nature - usually between 12,000 and 15,000 words long, with footnotes and bibliographies - on current international affairs of relevance to Spain or on different aspects of Spain's foreign policy and security.

This paper is written at a very critical time for the EU. Among other issues, the European project is just starting to overcome the most serious economic crisis that Europe and the world have seen since the 1929 crash: the financial crisis that began in 2008, which impacted the EU very severely. The EU is also currently suffering from the stress caused by Brexit, which will have, as this paper will argue, unprecedented consequences for the future of the European project. And finally, the Union is troubled as a result of the regionalist movements that some Member States, notably Spain, are witnessing at the time of writing. As Louis Armstrong song aptly claims: ‘so little time, so much to do’. However, in these distressed times for the European project, it seems more appropriate than ever to discuss in public what its future will be (see Closa & Molina, 2018)