This presentation analysis the concept of crisis in light of recent EU crises, Brexit, the financial crisis, COVID-19 and growing right-wing populism. It concludes that crisis became a mode of EU functioning that does not necessarily have destructive consequences but has led to numerous renewals and in many cases to decisive further integration.

The paper asks how a social crisis can come about and to what extent Koselleck’s approach could be made fruitful for the discussion about the EU crisis discourse. Recurring on Reinhart Koselleck’s concepts of criticism, super criticism and hypocrisis, the paper looks at historic European crises in order to reflect on the relationship between crisis and criticism.

This presentation studies the rhetoric of the Portuguese governments before and after the Eurocrisis. This case-study is crucial for the understanding of crises as it researches the various dimensions and the conceptual frontiers between the concepts of “political crisis” and
“economic crisis” and their understanding by the Portuguese governments of the time.

The European supranationalist ‘experiment’, which currently presents itself in the EU and its several crises, has been connected with ideas about a changing world order and liberalism. The EU financial and Covid-19 pandemic crises are part of a larger debate about
supranationalism that has been ongoing since 1989. To illustrate transformations of the idea of supranationalism in European debates linked with “crisis talk” from a conceptual historical perspective, this presentation asks: What kinds of formulations of supranationalism have there been proposed in different periods between 1989 and 2020?

The development of modernity is the work of Europe. Humanism, Enlightenment, rationalization, economic and technical development and the small-scale and multifaceted nature of Europe – all these have been effective in Europe since the twelfth century. These developments have seriously affected all other civilizations on earth and are still effective. This leads to the question if “republic” or “empire” is the appropriate political concept for Europe´s unity and capacity to compete with other empires as USA or China.

Recent EU crises have shown that steps to move beyond solely progressive or regressive teleologies are needed to theorize and understand European (dis)integration. A Foucauldian governmentality perspective provides a starting point for making accessible the hitherto underresearched field of intra‐EU politicization in this regard. Applied to the field of migration, it was exemplified how representations of a crisis are part and parcel of the continuous, neither linear nor unidirectional processes of performing, stabilizing, contesting or changing the meanings and manifestations of (dis)integration.

Democracy continues to be the legitimizing basis of political action, but the basis of its normative strength seems shaken. An eschatological perspective marked by the notions of crisis, catastrophe, end and death has penetrated democratic thought. We propose to show that, after its biggest victory (1989) and initial enthusiasm, democratic thought and practice can be conceptualized as different types of trauma. The purpose of this presentation is to show the roots, the scope and the consequences of these developments, drawing on theory and contemporary practice of democracy.

This paper analyses the crisis as a rhetorical topos that has a recurring frequency within parliamentary debate – although often carelessly rhetorically used. The paper aims at revealing the reasons and criteria of employing a crisis rhetoric. It approaches the topic in a historical perspective concentrating on German speaking parliaments since 1900 and going up to recent debates where he detects the crisis talk mainly in the Austrian context.

The discourses on the crisis of democracy refers to different topics, but all assume that there is a crisis of representation. The normative approach to representation, conceiving it as a “system of representation”, instead of a collection of institutional relations under the “agent-principal” model, give us a different perspective. This is key to reflect on the so-called democratic deficit of the EU, when it is conceived as a “compounded system of representation”.