European crisis of Legitimacy and the Conference for the Future of Europe – The Future of Europe as ideological battlefield and the Emergence of a Far-Right European Project

In recent years multiple crises hit the European Union in its core. The mutually reinforcing crises of the economy and politics result not least from the authoritarian structure of the European Union's crisis management. With Brexit, a process began in the Union to counter the accompanying crisis of legitimacy. Begun with the White Book on the Future of the EU after the Bratislava Summit in 2016, this process was transformed into the Conference on the Future of Europe after the last European election. The aim is to use new forms of participation to increase the legitimacy of the EU and counteract the crisis of democracy. At the same time, seemingly political dogmas are changing in the programs to combat the Corona pandemic. The conflicts surrounding these programs reveal new lines of conflict within the EU as well as changing power relations. In these processes, the question of the future of the EU and its relationship to the member states becomes a central arena for the formation of a right-wing, authoritarian European project. Its strategy consists above all in a dichotomous opposition between Europe and the EU, in order to use the legitimacy crisis to further delegitimize above all those European institutions that still represent, however limitedly, democratic and subaltern interests, such as the ECJ or the Parliament. The presentation will situate these strategies of right-wing actors in the context and significance of the conference for the future of Europe. The ideological battlefield of creating a shared vision of a common future must be seen as a crucial area of conflicts for crisis management. Thus, it is needed to contextualize this area within the political crisis of the EU. From the perspective of a materialist theory of the state and democracy, this will provide a picture of the depth of the crisis of democracy and its development, not least in the pandemic.