European Futures

This book saves you time, but it does not save you effort. It saves you time because it surveys many other scenarios excersises undertaken by governments, supranational and intergovernmental organisations, interest groups and think tanks, and gives you an overview of what Europe could look like in twenty years' time. But it does not save you effort because it makes you think. It makes you think because all the scenarios it offers are provocative. Like them or loathe them, they will cause you to sit up and think. Superstate Europ, where the EU concentrates on the West of Europe, a defended market forging ahead economically and social forces keeping the poor at the gates? Flexible Europe, open to all Eastern Europe and North Africa as well, with three groups of countries travelling 'flexibly' at different speeds towards increasingly distant goals? Europe adrift, where the Treaty of Nice is the last joint effort, and after that5 the spectre of disintegration? Federal Europe, where a constitution fixes who does what and the best (or worst) is realised? Are these the futures we want? If so, which, and why?