The indolent Europe. A hypothesis about the geopolitical effects of the pandemic

Abstract

The European Union is facing perhaps its last chance to consolidate a political project as original as it is necessary. The political agreements that are adopted to face the effects of the global pandemic will depend on whether the project is strengthened or that the existential and legitimacy crisis that has been evident for some time is accentuated. This is the historic moment to demonstrate that you want to be something very different from a market union: a political community. On the other hand, it can also be an opportunity to consolidate as a moral bench-mark in defense of a decent society and as a geopolitical “third space” in a new world, without a center, characterized during the first decades of the 21st century by a certain geopolitical (dis)order, due to the relative decline of the US and the relative rise of China.