The European Union has been struggling with a multilevel poly-crisis, weakening popular support for European integration, over the past more than a decade. Political leaders aim to reverse these dynamics through democratising and politicising the Union in order to bring it closer to citizens. However, this runs counter to a trend of increasing political alienation among the same citizens at the national level.

This is a book about troubled and troubling transformations in contemporary European societies and politics, which generate fears across the continent. Fears of disintegration at the European level, fears of disorder and instability at the national level, fears of disorientation at the individual level, fears of becoming irrelevant at the global level, and fears of the future that seems to be full of dangers and risks.

The authors give an overview of public debates about key challenges – regarding social inequalities, demography, migration, the ecological debt, sustainable development, democracy, communication, populism, or strategic sovereignty – behind these fears, and explain alternative responses offered to them. They address university students in the first place, but also hope to shape awareness in a broader public.

Today’s fears, if ignored or left unanswered, have a dangerous potential to evolve into a new political era of anxiety in Europe, with a presumably devastating effect. But this is not inevitable. The future may not be as doomed as it looks at first glance.