The asylum-seeker and euro area crises have led to the questioning of two of the EU’s most emblematic foundation stones, “the Schengen area” and the euro. Yves Bertoncini argues that these crises have been addressed by devising a new shareout of solidarity and of sovereignty in Europe, at the cost of vibrant political controversy which, albeit beset by grief, has not hampered the deepening of European construction.
 
1 – A “solidarity crisis” on the verge of being resolved
2 – A sharing of sovereignty that also reflects a crisis of confidence
3 – “Growing pains” that have to be overcome:  transcending “euroscoliosis”
 
Yves Bertoncini concludes this Viewpoint by underlining that the European Federation of nation-states is akin to a Tower of Babel which will probably always bear a greater resemblance to the Tower of Pisa than to the Eiffel Tower. Because it organises union in diversity, its architecture is bound to remain both atypical and always to be a trifle askew.  But that should not prevent it from continuing to exist or from growing further, even amid crises, as long as its peoples continue to believe that there is strength in unity.