The European Union in a Changing World

:A New Quest for Further Integration

Abstract

　This is a forward to this annual volume, which celebrates EUSA Japan’s forty years’ anniversary. The paper first contrasts the economic, political and institutional contexts of the European Communities in the 1980s with those of the European Union in the 2020s. Radical changes have happened during the forty years. The Cold War is gone, European single market is realised with a single currency Euro, the European Parliament is now a co-legislator alongside with the Council for most of the European matters, EU-Japan relations have improved from conflict to partnership. The paper then argues that these changes have generated some new challenges to pursue further integration at the European level. Those include the need to develop a better way of enhancing democratic legitimacy in EU governance; the need of more sensitive balancing of interests by the Court of Justice, such as the European interest to further integration and the national interest to maintain national identities of the member states; the need of addressing to social side-effects of market integration （widening income gap between EU citizens and between the member states）; the enhanced role of the EU in making global rules and standards. The paper concludes that it is possible that new modus operandi may emerge even under the same old EU structure to address to those challenges, since the formal amendment procedure of the basic treaties is now quite unwieldy among twenty-seven member states.