Leitbilder for the Future of the European Union

With treaty reforms, EU-budget negotiations, and Euro-zone enlargements, European integration has been put to a great test at the beginning of the 21st century. How were these developments experienced in different EU Member States? How did the variety of actors in seven exemplified countries react to these changes and to a growing heterogeneity within the EU? How did they thus formulate their ideas and their model for the future of the EU, their Leitbilder? This book examines these questions with a research approach that originates in the basic assumption that the Leitbilder model can be seen as a key factor in the development of the EU. Leitbilder contains conceptual statements dealing with the underlying institutional and constitutional construction of the EU and its potential finalite. These conceptual statements can also relate to elements of the integration process, including specific policy areas. The analysis of Leitbilder in old and new EU Member States answers the questions in which way the spectrum of the Euro-political Leitbilder changed with enlargement and if, as a consequence of potentially increasing heterogeneity within the EU, there are foreseeable tendencies of greater fragmentation, continuity, or reinvention.