The New Politics of Europe

Luuk van Middelaar finds himself in the nerve centre of European politics between 2010 and 2015, and sees the transformation of Europe taking place before his very eyes. A new awareness of its own role and importance develops in the European Council as the assembled heads of government improvise and discover what it means to share one currency, one border, one Union. The sizzling European election years of 2016 and 2017 form the culmination of another development that is equally connected to the new politics of Europe. In unexpected places and ways, the real opposition awakens, visibly and audibly challenging the solidified Brussels consensus. Van Middelaar convincingly connects the dynamics of the long development, incidental events and rebellious movements, and Europe's actions.

Van Middelaar describes in great detail how the politics of events is emerging as a response to the overwhelming unpredictability of history. This new politics wants to give shape, not to the end of history but to the beginning. Van Middelaar offers perspective, creates clarity in crises, tensions and conflicts that tumble over each other, and sets out the broad outlines. Europe has undeniably entered a politically revolutionary phase. In recent years, the Brussels rule factory has reached its natural optimum. The public has risen to its feet. The spectacle no longer leaves anyone cold.
Making this exciting power struggle in Europe readable and manageable, that is what The New Politics of Europe offers. With verve, Luuk van Middelaar shows how politicians in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, London and The Hague are setting the Union up for the future with fits and starts.

Luuk van Middelaar has succeeded once again: eight years after The Passage to Europe with which he stormed the international stage, he once again offers a dazzling history of the present, as revealing as it is instructive.

Luuk van Middelaar (1973) is a leading historian and political philosopher in the Netherlands and in Europe. From 2010 to 2015 he was a speechwriter and political advisor to the first President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy. Since 2015 Van Middelaar has been Professor of Foundations and Practice of the European Union and its Institutions at Leiden University, and also Professor of European Studies in Louvain-la-Neuve. He is a regular political commentator for NRC Handelsblad and the Flemish newspaper De Tijd. He can be read in Die Zeit, Le Monde and El País. His previous book De Passage naar Europa has received many awards and honours, and has been translated worldwide into French, Polish, German, Estonian, Spanish, Hungarian, English, Chinese, Ukrainian, Turkish and Brazilian.

'One of the most cogent thinkers about the EU is Luuk van Middelaar, a historian educated in Holland and France, and now based in Brussels. His articles frequently appear in France, as well as his native Holland. As a former member of the cabinet of the Belgian Herman Van Rompuy, the first president of the European Council, van Middelaar knows the EU from the inside out. He sees the problem of Europe mainly as a political crisis.'
-Ian Buruma, The New York Review of Books