The EU at Crossroads: 2022 as a Turning Point Year?
本文探讨2022年多重危机（疫情、乌克兰战争、生活成本、气候）是否成为欧盟的转折点，分析危机对欧盟制度、政策响应及政治极化的影响，适合关注欧盟治理与危机应对的学者。
Multiple crises in 2022 continued to pose challenges to the EU not only as a political system but also as an institutional architecture and to its member states. In our editorial of the Annual Review of 2021, we commented that although crises have become a recurrent element within European politics, some of the EU-specific crises have been overtaken by global ones (Massetti and Exadaktylos, 2022). The number of crises and their overlap in 2022 have been considerable: the aftermath of the pandemic fed into the start of the war in Ukraine and created a parallel cost-of-living crisis, alongside an overarching climate crisis that frequently knocked on the EU's door. Therefore, the newly emerging security environment in Europe on the one hand and the ability of the EU to respond to fiscal demands on the other created a sensitive policy response that required both bold and carefully designed actions. Crises can be perceived as focusing events, changing the schedule of priorities in government and institutional agendas and refocusing public policy responses at the EU level. Member states experiencing the knock-on effects of crises domestically are also adding to the EU burden as they may be projecting those experiences upwards, pressing for an EU-level response. Most importantly, however, crises expose the inefficiencies of institutional and governance architectures. They underscore chronic problems of underfunding of policies and reductions in welfare provision and previous choices to kick a can down the road rather than acting in a pre-emptive way. The exposure of such issues within the EU happens both horizontally (between and across member states) and vertically (between member states and the EU), supranationally affecting the trajectory of integration. Politically, crises affected the public mood at both domestic and EU levels. Looking back at previous years, we have experienced the emergence of new points of political polarisation that manifested themselves into interesting and unique electoral outcomes. In our Annual Review of 2019 editorial, we reflected on the waves of populism and right-wing extremism that swept across Europe, including the political drama of the Brexit negotiations, and argued that despite the troubled year of 2018, EU leaders managed to breathe new life into integration as a common goal, especially following the European Parliament election of 2019 (Exadaktylos et al., 2020). Coming now to a full political cycle at the EU level ahead of the next European Parliament election in 2024, the resilience shown by the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to stick to her agenda through the pandemic and beyond; the reappearance of the European Greens on the political stage; and the shift of public opinion on issues such as the climate crisis may not have been enough to alleviate the tension between political forces pushing for European reform and those pursuing disintegration. In this context, have lessons from previous crises managed to strengthen the foundations of European integration and solidarity amongst EU citizens or have crises managed to embed polarisation within the daily political narrative across the EU and within its member states? To that end, some key electoral contests in Europe such as the Italian, French and Swedish elections have managed to demonstrate that the political strength of the extreme right has the capacity of determining political outcomes either as a sizeable threat within mainstream opposition or even as part of a government or coalition of governing parties. Such outcomes potentially have a knock-on effect in future elections that could see an overall change in the balance of power within national and supranational political systems. This is an important observation as such polarised environments favour affective rather than rational thinking (Verbalyte et al., 2022), especially when it comes to public policy interventions or when choosing certain measures of action (Zahariadis et al., 2023). Crises also heighten the sense of urgency of response by the political system to the problems crises themselves accentuate or create as a knock-on effect. As a primary response, political actors need to show at least some form of action. Considering the way that the EU functions in terms of its search for consensus-based responses and respect for a lower common denominator, it is frequently commented that the EU becomes a slow-moving beast in responding to crises. The year 2022 was no exception in terms of the action the EU needed to be seen taking in response both to the war in Ukraine and to associated crises in energy and inflation. The question however is whether 2022 became a turning point for the EU in terms of its own ability to react (i.e., capacity building) and deliver policies to tackle the core roots of a crisis or its aftermath. What 2022 demonstrated was that some of the EU's previous instruments had become obsolete (especially in response to the war in Ukraine) and that certain ways of doing things required a complete overhaul not only to claim responsibility for actions but also to respond to external pressures. In fact, the EU had to reconsider its practices in terms of wider deliberation and balance between EU and national interests. During the pandemic, it was clear that despite the prioritisation of national interests, member states needed to work together to progress the common EU interests – such endeavours quickly became imperative once war broke out in Ukraine, and its rippling effects started to be felt across the European continent. Finally, crises bring about opportunity for new political entrepreneurs to emerge. These can be in the form of benign political innovators or even non-liberal democratic political forces taking advantage of opportunities to project certain agendas or establish themselves within the political system. The plurality of points within the EU political system where such entrepreneurs and agents may emerge complicates politics as the EU has to battle between old paradigms and new ways of doing things. These opportunities have the capacity of becoming turning points (much like the Brexit referendum) changing power dynamics, agendas and the applicability of existing solutions, shifting the boundaries of the EU's own comfort zone. Radaelli (2022) in the Annual Review annual lecture suggested that lessons learned from one crisis should feed into learning mechanisms preparing a political system for the next one. To that end, the multiplicity of crises not only can change the rules of the game at the EU level, as well as the degrees of interaction between different actors involved, but also affect the way the EU learns to live within a perma-crisis – resembling a ‘boiling frog’ syndrome to the point that the EU does not realise it exists within a crisis environment and becomes consumed by the crisis itself. When one looks at the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, for instance, the subsequent energy crisis almost devoured the sustainability of the Green Deal agenda. The line-up of contributions for the Annual Review of 2022 incorporates articles touching upon all these topics, starting with the Annual Lecture by Tanja Börzel on the impact of the war on European integration setting the tone for a set of articles around Euro-Russian relations and the role of the EU as a foreign policy actor, continuing with a round-up of key electoral competitions in Europe, followed by reflections on energy, society, growth and climate change. The articles have a fil rouge in the overlapping crises that have the capacity to feed into each other and create severe knock-on effects, impacting the EU both as a political system and as an integration endeavour. In the Annual Lecture, Professor Tanja Börzel takes up a deep discussion into the implications of the war in Ukraine on European integration, reflecting on the type of crisis this is for Europe. Börzel (2023) suggests that the war has upgraded the common interest cutting across ideological divides, ‘framed in terms of order (who we are) rather than border (who belongs to us)’. The argument is that EU solidarity expressed towards Ukraine's defence of its independence against Russia alongside a promise for membership has been extended as a result of the intersection of order and border. The war managed to upset the EU liberal principles for organising politics and society penetrating the very essence of what the EU is. Börzel suggests that this crisis has not had the same effect on integration as Covid-19 or the older Euro crisis, meaning that despite higher co-operation between member states, it has not brought about a degree of centralisation or change in the way of doing things. In contributing to theories of European integration, the lecture argues that identity politics help us understand this crisis' outcome; it has not advanced the politicisation of strengthening the EU's strategic autonomy and has not resulted in the expected transfer of power towards the EU. Despite the necessity to make vital decisions and the opportunity for creative responses emerging during a crisis, the key factor to move forward is the threat of disintegration or the possibility of a breakdown. Tom Casier's contribution on the same thematic strand looks at the way the war has affected the direction of EU policy by creating a united front against Russia, bringing back ideas on enlargement, creating a new security role and implementing large-scale sanctions. However, the question posed in this article is whether these changes are sustainable when the urgency and the threat are not there (Casier, 2023). Sustainability will require decision-making reforms and responsiveness to an ever-changing international environment, meaning that although the EU's regional actorness may have increased, its role in the global level may not have the same gravitas. The EU would have to work together with NATO to redesign a new European security order. But Casier suggests that such change in the EU's geopolitical agenda would have to be balanced by its democracy support agenda too. Continuing the conversation on the issues emerging out of the war in Ukraine, Nicole Scicluna and Stefan Auer (2023) revisit the EU's foreign and enlargement policy following the announcement of Ukraine's candidacy as an EU member state in June 2023. The announcement seemed rushed considering that the application was submitted a few days following the invasion and a decision was reached within 4 months. Previous enlargement experiences demonstrate clearly that applications for membership are long-term macro-social processes, but, in this case, the decision was geared towards symbolic politics showcasing the EU's support towards Ukraine. The authors argue that had it not been for the war, such a decision may have never happened, and if it did, it would certainly not have that pace. Hence, the authors ask what the EU can offer, what it should offer Ukraine, and how this changes enlargement as a foreign policy instrument. Under the classic ‘capabilities–expectations’ gap (Hill, 1993), the authors suggest that the gap has grown, with the EU extending very high expectations without necessarily having the capabilities to push in tangible terms Ukraine's process to membership. The EU has not been able in the past to assess its own power and how it can use it, so it will need to look back at enlargement as a foreign policy tool to avoid the traps of previous enlargements. The contribution by Niklas Helwig follows on the war in Ukraine to discuss the EU's strategic autonomy. He argues that the EU has focused on underscoring an agenda of strategic autonomy across three axes: protecting itself from foreign intervention, providing a competitive economic environment and projecting its norms and values at the global level (Helwig, 2023). The contribution analyses the objectives of this agenda in confronting the challenges emanating from Russia's aggression mainly on the EU's ability to collectively design and decide its own strategy to influence global developments by setting its own terms of interaction. The article suggests that the war highlighted only that the EU has not developed fully the capacity to act on such matters alone. Its strategic autonomy may not be achievable considering the global dependencies, but it can have increased agency and lead a global diplomatic response, especially considering the complexity of its economic response to the war. The EU's inexperience exposed its own shortcomings. Closing the dominant theme of 2022 around the war in Ukraine, the final contribution on the subject by Elspeth Guild and Kees Groenendijk takes stock of the wave of refugees who fled to the EU from the very first days of the war to the present time. More than four million Ukrainians found refuge in EU countries since the start of the war, and the EU was quick to extend a temporary protection scheme (in effect until March 2024). The two authors, placing the caveat of the war lasting longer than the temporary protection scheme, discuss what would be the correct EU response after the scheme lapses under the prism of international human rights law (Guild and Groenendijk, 2023). The authors argue that any decision about the future of Ukrainians wishing to remain within the EU after the lapse of the scheme should be determined through EU law rather than national legislation. In that regard, the EU should learn from the temporary scheme regarding its ability to protect people fleeing war. As the Ukrainian case suggests, there is no such thing as ‘saturation’ from migration, because the EU has the means and resources to sustain its protection scheme. In addition, restrictions of movement of those arriving have been reversed for those under the temporary scheme – to the surprise of EU officials, this opportunity has not been taken up by Ukrainian refugees who mostly stay within the country of arrival. Moving to the second section of the Annual Review of 2022, we took stock of three key electoral contests in France, Italy and Sweden. The link between the three elections had been the advances that the far right was making in terms of electoral support, which created interesting political outcomes, albeit different, in the three countries. Starting with France, Marta Lorimer and Lise Esther Herman (2023) reflect on what they call Macron's ‘half-victory’. 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