Instead, the EU needs to radically reconfigure its whole political structure. One much-discussed option is the creation of a two-speed EU, with the possibility of so-called core states moving toward political union without the periphery states. Yet this solution is likely to be unworkable, as few southern or eastern European states would put up with such treatment, and two supposed core states—France and the Netherlands—have some of the continent’s highest levels of popular hostility toward the EU. If the core is based on the eurozone, moreover, there will be little scope for different levels of integration, given that nearly all member states are either already in the eurozone or have signed up to join.
What the EU needs, rather, is a renaissance, challenging inherited ideas about what cooperation between nations and peoples looks like. This renaissance should move away from a focus on formal, institutional relations between states and toward a more democratic compact based on solidarity between citizens. Without the fuller participation of Europe’s citizens, no new policies will be able to address the current malaise, which is based largely on ordinary people’s distrust of the European project. To address this malaise, European leaders should adopt what I call a Compact of European Citizens, governed by four principles of cooperative decision-making. [...]
Instead of a centralized bureaucracy in Brussels, policy formation could be decentralized to a series of policy communities, which would oversee cooperation in different policy areas and which would be managed by agencies geographically distributed across Europe. National governments, then, would be free to choose which policy communities to join depending on the preferences of their citizens. This principle would give each state an active and positive role in shaping the EU’s future rather than a passive one that must accept undesirable obligations. [...]
As for the practicalities of such an arrangement, European leaders should look to legal pluralism. Legal pluralism explores how different juridical and regulatory norms might coexist within a single political system, and a rich academic literature on the subject offers resources on designing legal systems to accommodate populations with radically different preferences. For instance, there could be a more liberal legal immigration arrangement for Europe’s big multicultural cities and a stricter one for the hinterlands, or some regions of a member state might want to buy in to European cooperation initiatives that other regions of the country oppose.
