Sovereignty Crises and the EU's Moral Challenge

Abstract

This article investigates the potential responsibility of the European Union (EU) for its ongoing state of permanent crisis, contending that this condition is not merely incidental or externally imposed but rather fundamentally woven into the EU's political framework. By situating the analysis at the intersection of political philosophy and the conceptual analysis of the idea of Europe, the article reconceptualises crisis not as an exceptional anomaly but as an expression of a deeper moral and symbolic failure, engaging with academic debates on how Europeanness shapes the EU's identity, legitimacy, and integrative tensions. Drawing on the works of thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Rodolphe Gasché, it further explores the idea that the EU's recurrent crises reverberate a failure to articulate a form of sovereignty that is adequate to the uniqueness of the European historical and normative trajectory. In this context, the current rise of sovereignism does not express the need to re-appropriate sovereignty as such but rather the inalienability of the symbolic benefits inherent in such rhetoric. Sovereignism is read less as a genuine demand for enhanced state power and more as a manifestation of the EU's inability to offer a compelling political and moral alternative. Hence, the article advocates for developing a moral sovereignty that can transcend the exhausted logic of state-centric authority. Ultimately, it posits that the EU's most pressing challenge lies in affirming its political legitimacy not through technocratic governance but through a renewed ethical commitment to the European ideal as an infinite, humanist task.