Over the last two decades, the European Union (EU) has
faced a series of intertwined crises, including the Global Financial Crisis in
2008 and the structural adjustment programmes imposed by the EU and the IMF on
several member states; the increase of flows of refugees triggered by war and
famines and the humanitarian disaster caused by Fortress Europe; Brexit and the
rise of Euroscepticism. In turn, new crises have emerged and further
intensified the previous ones: the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and
the impending climate catastrophe. To capture the multiple, interrelated, and
self-reinforcing characters of the crises affecting global capitalism and
European integration, the term ‘polycrisis’ – originally coined by the French
complex theorists Edgar Morin and Anne Brigitte Kern – has become increasingly
popular, both among scholars and European elites alike (Tooze, 2022). As we argue in our recently published co-edited
volume, Critical Political Economy of the
European Polycrisis (Edward
Elgar, 2025), Critical Political Economy (CPE) is well placed to contribute to
this debate. In this blog post, we will outline the purpose underpinning this
volume and present some of the key findings.
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