What does the protracted financial crisis reveal about the political viability of a unified Europe? Does it confirm the oft-discussed “democratic deficit,” the pervasive anxiety about what Hans Magnus Enzensberger has recently called “Brussels, the gentle monster”? Is it proof that the economic, cultural and social differences among the twenty-seven European Union member states are impossible to reconcile, that the cost of EU cohesion is letting the strongest “core nations”—Germany and France—lord it over the economically weaker, dispirited member states? A decade ago, legal scholars and intellectuals debated whether a Europe-wide democracy required a common cultural heritage rooted in ethnicity, religion and national history, or if shared ethical values, common institutions and social ideals would suffice as transnational bonds. Now the question is whether transnational European democracy is feasible at all.
