"This book leads systematically through the functional areas of the EU and examines the patterns of its decision-making processes using examples on the three levels of law, politics and culture. It shows that the internal tension of European integration is translated into a mechanism that exhibits regularities that transcend problems: a limited transfer of power to the Union level is followed by its dissolution. This in turn leads to strong ambivalences of the states and their citizens towards integration.

These ambivalences can only be managed, but not eliminated. After all, anything that promotes Europeanization leads to conflicts with the national will of many individual states to assert themselves, while conversely this will stands in the way of the Union pooling its power. In this situation, the current global political upheaval is increasingly forcing Europe to adapt to the changed situation. Whether and how the European Union can succeed in countering the onset of atavistic political violence and containing the rise of populist forces in the member states is also the subject of this perceptive stocktaking of European integration." (Publisher)