Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. Wikimedia commons. CC.
In 2017, the old EU is dead, but the new EU has yet to be born. In the context of ongoing debates, Juncker’s “White Paper” is the latest intervention in ongoing discussions over ‘multi-speed’ Europe that date back to the 1970s.
Leaders from across the continent are converging on this approach as the fix to Europe’s creaking institutional infrastructure, but discussions among ‘core EU states’ have gone down particularly badly with eastern European governments. From their perspective, Juncker’s “those who want more, do more” risks turning into the old-fashioned “the strong do what they want, the weak suffer what they must” – unless certain measures are taken.
