Recent Crises and the Evolution of European Policies. An Introduction

This introduction briefly presents the contents of the six contributions that compose the special issue of The Forum for Social Economics titled ‘Recent crises and the evolution of European policies’. We discuss the papers by proposing a reflection on the evolution of the European institutional structure, the assessment of policies that have marked especially the last 15 years characterized by the continuous succession of crises, and the future of Europe. At the end of our argument, we make room for two main reflections: 1) In the face of external shocks affecting European Union, the endogenous stabilization attempts provided for an incomplete institutional system have amplified the instability present in the system itself; 2) the analysis of structural and institutional change is crucial to propose alternative policy perspectives focused on quality of life and to bring them back into the public debate, which seems to be increasingly urgent in Europe.