One of the reasons for the success of the EU integration process has been the majority acceptance by European citizens of the proposals that came to them from the highest levels of the process.

At the beginning - back in the fifties, sixties and seventies of the last century - the proposals were based on a radical rejection of war, the reconciliation of former European enemies (mainly Germany and France), the common defense of freedom and democracy against Soviet totalitarianism or the economic advantages of economic liberalization and integration. The common market enthused Europeans in the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s. The last period of success was at the beginning of the new century, when the EU boasted a single currency, a constitutional treaty in the making, successive enlargements and the great goal to create the world's most competitive, fair and environmentally friendly Economics in 2010 (diary Lisbon). The EU was the envy of major powers such as China and the USA.

But it soon became clear that the Lisbon diary was not going to be fulfilled because some of the new member countries had entered without sufficient preparation. After the negative result in 2005 in the French and Dutch referendum on the constitutional treaty, things really started to go awry and the status became extremely complicated with the onset of the great economic recession. Many citizens do not understand the austerity prescriptions. Disaffection towards EU institutions is growing and anti-European initiatives are emerging. The EU today is in need of new proposals that will once again inspire citizens. The upcoming May elections to the European Parliament offer a great opportunity in this respect.

There is no shortage of exciting scenarios: overcoming the euro crisis through a strong Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), a federal political union based on the traditional values of freedom, solidarity and democracy, or turning the EU into a true global player alongside other global powers such as the United States and China and thus avoiding our geopolitical irrelevance. The next European Parliament has the floor.