Avoiding a Shrinking EU in an Expanding Planet: A Turkish Contribution to the Debate on Europe’s Future

Global challenges are pushing the EU toward an unavoidable dilemma. The EU ought to expand to include new countries and reach a critical size that will let it weather the 21st century. However, the EU has to also be a stronger, more unified political system whose functional feasibility depends on a limited number of countries in advanced economic and monetary convergence. The vicious circle of 'a globally competitive, wider Europe' versus an 'institutionally efficient deeper eurozone, with a limited number of countries' can only be broken by an innovative institutional engineering in adopting a progressive approach.