At first glance, the social purpose and the democratic potential of the EU have made progress in the last 15 years. However, this impression is misleading. We argue instead that the social and democratic potentials of the EU are crucially shaped by the heterogeneity of European varieties of...

Das Papier wendet sich an die Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnehmer der EU-Reformdebatte. Ich schlage vor, die im Weißbuch der Kommission zur Zukunft Europas angemahnte Debatte nicht auf die politischen Kompetenzen der EU zu verengen. Stattdessen sollten jene Einschränkungen politischer...

This paper contributes to the EU reform debate that the Commission started with its white paper on the future of Europe. I suggest that we should not only pay attention to the political competences of the EU, but also focus on the restriction of the political room for manoeuvre which derives...