The Perfect Storm of the European Crisis

Book excerpt: The most significant phenomenon occurring around us today is the European crisis. As well as being a “total social phenomenon” as classical French sociologist Émile Durkheim would have said, it also affects all the levels of our lives—be they political, economic, cultural or social. Nothing remains untouched. In other words, it represents a “perfect storm”. This volume brings together the contributions of twenty authors, scientists from the “Ion I.C. Brătianu” Institute of Political Sciences and International Relations of the Romanian Academy, in response to this challenge. Using an expression that is becoming more abundantly associated with Europe, namely “the perfect storm”, the book decodes multiple layers of the crisis, whether they relate to migrants, terrorism, Brexit, the economic crisis of the Eurozone, the Turkish challenge, Russian pressures, TTIP, the resurrection of populism, or the (intermittent) hysteria of the European media.