Rethinking Europe

Conclusion

Towards a cosmopolitan Europe

Studies of contemporary Europe have coalesced around the formation and trajectory of the European Union, its role in the formation of trans-European linkages and institutional structures, and the disseminations of policy preferences. This is a Europe seen in terms of polity-building and governance structures, and which has an over-riding concern with the fate of the nation-state: its rescue, incorporation, and supercession. This focus has led, over a period of time, to the view that the most important transformations in Europe are ones initiated by the EU; creation of an economic bloc, enlargement, creation of the single market, introduction of EU citizenship, the single currency, etc. With a little more ...