The EU Has Been Shaped by Crisis: Chronicle of a Crisis Foretold

This chapter presents the case that the European Union (EU) has been shaped by crisis: the Empty Chair crisis in the 1960s, the Oil Crisis of the 1970s, the Eurosclerosis of the 1980s and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It further examines the background of crisis, institutional and symbolic, with a focus on the connections between the Euro crisis and significant past events such as the failure of the Constitutional Treaty, the ratification problems of the Treaty of Lisbon, the ongoing legitimacy crisis and EU enlargement. Viewed in historical context, the current crisis reinforces the expiration of both the permissive consensus and the acceptance of elite decision-making.