Abstract

On 12 September 2018, Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, presented the State of the Union 2018 to the European Parliament. He stressed his enthusiasm for economic progress in the EU within the context of the preceding global and European crisis. He also re-emphasized the importance of a unified Europe, both in dealing with internal growth and promoting social cohesion within the Single European Market (SEM), as well as in relation to growing global competition. Over the decades, shared European challenges and crises have resulted in common debates, negotiations, policies and laws providing for European integration. These challenges and crises have not always been easy to address, but the contemporary EU is a major symbol of European unity amidst diversity. This is not to say that a European crisis cannot result in distrust, disengagement and finally disintegration. There have been and will be serious structural and systematic hindrances in politics and economics, but European integration suggests that Europe’s development has embedded political entrepreneurship by treating crises as opportunities.