The European Crisis in the Context of Cosmopolitization

Are we heading toward a post-European age, a paradoxical revival of small-state particularism in the age of globalization? Has a feeling of threat and insecurity become so overwhelming that the "old clarity" is becoming attractive and people are fleeing into the future of the nineteenth century? Or might what feels like a sense of shock at the mortality of the European community mark the beginning of a historical turn away from a Europe dominated by the nation-state to a transnational European politics and society? The catastrophe threatening Europe has been analysed from the perspective of political institutions, the economy, elites, governments, and the law, but not from the perspective of the individual. What does Europe mean for individuals and what principles for a new social contract for Europe can be developed? In this essay I would like to design the thesis that Europe needs a new contrat social.