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Sovereignty retains considerable currency today insofar as it fuses ordinary understandings of the state, the nation, and democracy. Against widespread expectations, however, the European Union has increasingly harnessed sovereignty as a source of vitality. We are thus witnessing a mainstreaming of populist politics, as the rhetoric of sovereignty no longer disqualifies new EU institutions and policies. This can be better understood if we consider sovereignty, from a constructivist perspective, as an evolving set of practices. First, sovereignty evolves within political and administrative circles, as European officials act to modify longstanding practices of state sovereignty. Second, sovereignty evolves in an increasingly politicized context, as political leaders dramatize EU crises in order to mobilize coalitions around new practices of popular sovereignty. This dual dynamic of state sovereignty and popular sovereignty is demonstrated in the case of the Eurozone and then extrapolated to the current trajectory of the EU polity against the benchmark of US federalism after the Civil War. An open question is whether sovereignty practices in the European Union will continue to evolve without compromising the Union's cosmopolitan and liberal objectives.

The European Union (EU) is not a state, though it has some statelike attributes; it is not an empire, though it includes many former European imperial powers; and it is not a federation, though Euro-federalists seek to make it one. There is, however, no need to argue that the Union is a singularity, nor to invent novel terminology, such as that deployed by “neo-functionalists” and “intergovernmentalists” to capture its legal and political form. The EU is a confederation, but with consociational characteristics in its decision-making styles. This conceptualization facilitates understanding and helps explain the patterns of crises within the Union.

In a globalised economy, the EU, being self-confident, could shape international standards by defending and promoting its own socioeconomic model. Social democratic parties rhetorically confess the need for a ‘European social model’, but meanings and ways to achieve it differ largely. In a comparative case study on the programmatic positioning of the German Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands and the Spanish Partido Socialista Obrero Español, the parties' perspectives on the integration mode and their handling of the Economic and Monetary Union framework and its crisis over the last decade are traced. Although similar paths from neoliberal convictions of the ‘third way’ to a positive integration process in a fiscal union setting are found, the scope and levels vary, illustrating the abilities of both parties to meet new transnational challenges. The crisis of the Eurozone was a definitive turning point for the positioning of the Social Democrats in Spain in favour of more political and fiscal integration. In contrast, their German comrades already advocated increased social integration of the EU since 2005 but remained very cautious regarding reforms of the economic framework established by the Eurozone.

One of the most significant impacts of the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (EU) would be the complication, and even the stalemate, of the supranational unification process of the EU, which was the founding idea of the Union. In this chapter, the adverse circumstances that will take place in the supranational unification process will be addressed over two significant issues. The first of the issues is the losses that the Union will experience. The Union, which had realized partnership in many areas to achieve the supranational unification and which, at least, has held out hope for other areas, would experience significant losses concerning motivation, time, capacity, and power of influence, and it would be difficult for the Union to reconstitute itself. In addition to these losses, the consolidation of the right-wing populism filled with Eurosceptic and nationalist reactions in the member states following Brexit will further weaken the aspiration for supranational unification. Ultimately, the visibility of the relations in an intergovernmental context, instead of a supranational one, will become the dominant element, and the EU's journey toward long-term founding purpose will receive a major blow.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the European Union (EU) expanded, and its borders, and therefore its neighbors, changed. Hence, the EU needed a new policy to ensure its borders' security and improve relations with its neighbors. The idea of establishing a European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) thus emerged. One of the closest neighbors of the EU, Ukraine has always been in a priority position in the ENP, as it is a very important state for establishing a safe neighborhood. In this context, this article examines the EU's Ukraine strategy within the framework of ENP as a foreign policy instrument and its impact on Ukraine and EU–Ukraine relations by evaluating ENP's success based on the Euromaidan and Crimean crises.

Hungarians’ degree of knowledge of the EU has been increasing over the years, despite the mainly sovereignty-based and Eurosceptic political communication and related political and media narratives in the last 10 years. Still, whereas Hungarians tend to be familiar with factual information on the European Union, they face more challenges trying to figure out how the EU actually works. This is related to the scarcity of this type of information both in public education and the media, which can obstruct not only the adequate understanding of how the European Union functions, but also the support for its policies. The objective of this chapter is to examine how the EU-related content is taught in Hungarian educational system. The discussion covers teaching in primary, secondary and tertiary education. The investigation is based on document analysis, such as the National Core Curricula, secondary school textbooks, baccalaureate topics, as well as completion and exit requirements for bachelor and master programs of higher education institutions.

Intra-European labour migration has divergent labour market consequences across institutional settings and economic sectors. Some sectors experience increasing pressure on industrial relations and labour market segmentation while others do not experience such effects, and it remains unclear how to explain this variation. Based on empirical findings from a comparative study of four economic sectors in Denmark, this article discusses the role of labour market institutions and structural conditions in shaping the consequences of labour migration at a sectoral level.