When the first Russian missiles hit Ukrainian cities at dawn on 24 February 2022, many European and transatlantic certainties collapsed like a house of cards. In the midst of the struggle to rebuild Europe economically after the Covid-19 pandemic, Vladimir Putin is forcing the continent into a new age. And yet, the European Union appears more united than it has in a long time.
Thus, with the war in Ukraine, another challenge of fundamental proportions follows the constitutional crisis (2005), the financial crisis (from 2007), the euro crisis (from 2010), the migration crisis (from 2015), the Covid-19 crisis (from 2020) and the climate crisis. How has the EU reacted to this interplay of different crises? What fault lines have they revealed? What do the war and its consequences mean for the future of European integration? These questions underlie all the contributions of the Yearbook of European Integration 2022.
In its 2022 edition, the Yearbook describes and analyses all important areas of European policy between summer 2021 and summer 2022: this includes the work of the institutions, developments in the individual policy areas, Europe's role in the world, and European policy in the member states and candidate countries.
Thus, this 42nd edition of the Yearbook is also an important piece of contemporary European history. It not only brings together the events of the past year, but also continues the yearbook series that has been in existence since 1980. As a chronicle of the Union, the Yearbooks enable long-term comparisons and classifications, as well as a critical examination of the EU over long historical periods.
The Yearbook is a project of the Institut für Europäische Politik, which is realised in cooperation with the Centre for Applied Policy Research at the University of Munich (C·A·P) and the Centre for Turkey and EU Studies (CETEUS) at the University of Cologne. The yearbook is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.