Perspectives on Federalism is a free on-line peer-reviewed journal, promoted by the Centre for Studies on Federalism.

EU and EMU are facing a hastened phase of structural rather than episodic crisis, following the progressive shift of the world order from a bipolar toward a multi-polar system. From the sovereign debt trap to migratory pressures and security threats, all European crisis are intimately interdependent and long awaited rather than unexpected, since their origins trace back to a lack of reactivity of the European unification process to the progressive weakening of US hegemony in the world from 1971 onward. In this paper I point out that two double-binds mutually prevent a full (and widespread) understanding of Europe’s situation and avoid for this reason a fully structural approach to the institutional reforming process in the EU: a ‘sovereignty double-bind’ and a ‘democracy double-bind’. An effective roadmap toward political unification should primarily aim at tackling these misrepresentations instead of embracing them in the form of a gradualist approach to legitimacy issues.