ZEI Publications

In this final issue of the Future of Europe Obsever, ZEI and its research network takes a final look at one of the six substantive priorities of the von der Leyen Commission as part of the research project „Governance and Regulation in the EU“. Before a full assessment of the von der Leyen administration‘s term of office is published in September, this issue looks at the „European way of life“, what constitutes it, what threatens it and how the Commission has tried to shape it politically over the past five years. In addition to an outlook on the upcoming European elections and the concept of European identity, the topics of migration, health and security, which were at the centre of the Commission‘s priorities, are discussed.

The subtitle of this collection could also be ‘Reflections on transience, futility and new beginnings again and again’. One senses this attitude in some of the texts collected here. At the same time, there is also a sense of confidence throughout the texts. Even ‘between times’ and ‘between chairs’, as Ludger Kühnhardt describes his academic work, positive and constructive impetus can be given: impetus for enlightenment and in classifying the events that shape life. The articles in this anthology were created for a wide variety of reasons, but they are interrelated building blocks of Ludger Kühnhardt's struggle with Europe and globality. The articles and essays are framed by tributes which the author has dedicated to important companions and by reflections on his own efforts and their intentions. The texts are snapshots from the years 2020 to 2024, the year Kühnhardt retired as Head of the Center for European Integration Studies (ZEI).

ZEI Director Prof. Dr. Ludger Kühnhardt looks back on his inaugural lecture at the University of Bonn in 1987. The lecture was about political thinking in the southern hemisphere. In the spirit of the time, his analysis was cautiously optimistic with regard to the perspective of a gradual universalization of Western-based political norms. The silent recapture of power by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2021 and the aggressive Russian war of vengeance against Ukraine in 2022 demonstrated the ambivalence of the concept of progress in all its sharpness. Kühnhardt recalls the analyzes of his doctoral supervisor Karl Dietrich Bracher on the refractions in the modern concept of progress. Kühnhardt, shortly before his retirement, sees enormous challenges for the concept of progress and freedom as developed in Western civilization during the age of enlightenment. He pleads for maintaining the idea of human dignity against all old cultural doubts and new ideologies as the unalterable standard for a humane world.