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Introduction: European politics nowadays ] 13 The picture is bleaker when we listen to politicians discourse. Every single State of the Union address delivered by consecutive European Commission presidents in the past decade revolved around the crises the European Union has been facing (while the latest one, in 2021, was different in its spirit) — with a diverging tone of gravity, though, and typically in a more dramatic language at the beginning of their terms, and softer at the end. The very first such speech, in 2010 by José Manuel Barroso, focused on the economic and financial crisis, which “has put our Union before one of its greatest challenges ever” (Barroso 2010). In the two years that followed, Barroso’s assessment further sobered, referring to a general political crisis of confidence beyond the specific policy troubles: The crisis is financial, economic and social. But it is also a crisis of confidence. A crisis of confidence in our leaders, in Europe itself, and in our capacity to find solutions ... The result is clear: concern in our societies. Fear among our citizens for the future. A growing danger of a retreat into national, not to say nationalist, feeling ... Today we can say that the sovereign debt crisis today is, above all, a crisis of political confidence. And our citizens, but also people in the outside world, are observing us and wondering - are we really a Union? (Barroso 2011) Jean-Claude Juncker followed suit. In 2015, he built his whole speech around various - refugee, financial and economic, and Ukraine - crises, as well as climate change as a global challenge (Juncker 2015). In the following year, he declared that “our European Union is, at least in part, in an existential crisis” (Juncker 2016). A couple of years later, against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, another President, Ursula von der Leyen, highlighted the way the virus “exposes to us the fragility all around us” and “how fragile our community of values really is - and how quickly it can be called into question around the world and even here in our Union” (Von der Leyen 2020). Of course, it is not the prerogative of heads of the European Commission to worry about the present and the future of European integration. Political leaders of the Member States often do not paint a brighter picture, either - as in the ‘Future of Europe’ debates held in the European Parliament between January 2018 and April 2019, for instance, where they discussed a number of policy, political, and international challenges ahead (Drachenberg and Kotanidis 2019). As a matter of fact, leaders’ statements not only mirror, but sometimes also fuel tensions. As President Barroso warned in 2012: On too many occasions, we have seen a vicious spiral. First, very important decisions for our future are taken at European summits. But then, the next day, we see some of these very same people who took these decisions undermining them ... And then we get a problem of credibility. A problem of confidence ... We cannot belong to the same Union and behave as if we don’t. (Barroso 2012)
