Today, swirling uncertainties as to the mid-term future of the European project constitute a significant challenge to the on-going process of European integration. Predictably, now that the EU is for the first time in its history witnessing a decline in membership, pamphlets proffering sweeping verdicts on Brussels are very much in vogue. The authors of this book, however, believe that recent developments should be met with fresh study into the past and present functioning of the EU and the long-term dynamics of European integration. After all, today's uncertainties and controversies over the future of the European Union not only impact our reading of the present, as is visible in Brexit and the consequent soul-searching of the remaining 27. Current problems require a revisiting of the historical past. Events like Brexit or the migration crisis motivate historians to review historical crossroads in integration history, which is all too often reduced to unilinear progress. The impact of external structural forces such as climate change or conflict in the Middle East, the autonomous power of grand concepts – federalist aims, monetary union – and the motives of political agents both within and outside the Union are all being re-evaluated and scrutinized anew.

This textbook responds to the demand to revisit the past on two levels. First, in the central chronological chapters, the authors present their versions of a consolidated, uncluttered narrative of European integration. Whereas some of the nuance and alternative perspectives suggested by recent scholarly work may find their way into these chapters, much more of this is offered in the thematic sections that are presented separately. Here, students will find that the challenging of the well-known grand narrative of integration history opens up new vistas for term papers, while the general reader will see how, through new interpretations of past events, political spice is added to present controversies.

As a consequence of today's turmoil, any presentation or interpretation of the history of European integration, no matter how academic or impartial, is inevitably perceived as a public statement weighing in as pro-or anti-Brussels by those championing re-nationalization, a federalist future, a two-speed Europe or an avalanche of national exits. As the reader of older textbooks on European integration will find, the classic narrative of European integration was one of optimism and progress – European integration as an incremental development towards an ever-closer union.