The EU, writes Loukas Tsoukalis, is “a strange vehicle … unlike any others on the roads of the world, surely not a flashy vehicle – rather slow and not easy to drive. However, it has been able to accommodate ever-increasing numbers of passengers and covered a remarkably long distance – often in adverse conditions and with accidents on the way”.

However, while the union has shown itself to be resilient, the new economic, societal and geopolitical challenges it faces mean it has to be much more than that. It has to project as well as protect. It has to grow up. In Europe's Coming of Age (Polity, 2022), Tsoukalis explains why and how.

Born in Athens, Loukas Tsoukalis studied economics and international relations in Manchester, Bruges, and Oxford where he also taught for many years, followed by chairs at the University of Athens and the London School of Economics, and visiting professorships at Harvard and the College of Europe. Today, he is a professor at Sciences Po in Paris. This is the latest of his many books on the EU including The Politics and Economics of European Monetary Integration, What Kind of Europe? and In Defence of Europe: Can the European Project Be Saved?

*The authors' own book recommendations are: The Globalization Paradox: Why Global Markets, States, and Democracy Can't Coexist by Dani Rodrik (Oxford University Press, 2012), and Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World by Branko Milanovic (Belknap Press, 2019).

Tim Gwynn Jones is an economic and political-risk analyst at Medley Advisors and writes the Twenty-Four Two newsletter on Substack.

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