Ulrich Beck calls for a reinvention of the EU

If Europe didn't exist it would have to be invented, writes sociologist Ulrich Beck in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit: "The current crisis could be made use of to give a new start to the European Union. Europe could stand for a new brand of Realpolitik in the global risk society. In a networked world national Realpolitik - the idea that national interests must be pursued nationally - can be replaced by cosmopolitan Realpolitik: the more European and cosmopolitan our policies are, the more successful they will be on the national scale. Things are coming to a head: either more Europe or no Europe. This imperative of possible failure explains why hope is in decline. Only an EU that has been renewed by the crisis can believably and effectively regulate the markets in co-operation with Barack Obama's new cosmopolitanism. The summit meeting of the twenty most important industrial states in London this April could mark the transition to this cosmopolitan Realpolitik."

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