Perceptionary problems of europe's present and the future: comparative analysis of jan zielonka and jürgen habermas

As the geopolitical situation began to change in 2017, after the 2016 referendum on Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, published a White Paper on the future of Europe. The scenarios presented in this document were supposed to become the basis for the development of the European Union in the coming years until 2025, and has since provoked a considerable debate, does even one of the five scenarios have a chance taking it’s hold in the union of countries, that faces the differing positions on almost all major economic, political and ideological issues of its member states.This is not the first attempt by the European Union to formulate a common idea, but the implementation of such ideas has constantly failed. By analyzing the literature of two authors, Jurgen Habermas and Jan Zielonka, on the future of Europe, this work aims to find out what are the key challenges that are halting the formation of a common vision for a unified Europe. In the work the authors’ visions are analyzed by using the history of ideas approach, in order to elucidate the development of these ideas overtime.In order to touch more closely upon the issues of the future and current development of Europe, the authors’ visions of Europe are divided into four segments through which their comparative analysis takes place. These are the Economy, Security, Cultural integration and the Political system. In the comparative analysis of the authors based on the distinguished aspects, we can observe that in the areas we have analyzed, practically no similarity of approaches can be found. In the economic field, Habermas's criticism of the lack of a state control and redistribution mechanism, that would allow economies to develop evenly across the European Union and reduce disparities between Member States, is lacking, while Zielonka's vision even now contains too many control mechanisms, that create tensions between Member States and reduces the chances to reach an agreement with each other even further. Similar conclusions can be drawn on the topics of Security, Identities and the Political system, in which the views of the authors also barely intersect. Still, a fundamental difference, when comparing the authors’ visions, comes from looking at what should be the finite scenario of the European model. Here, two different ideological poles meet: a centralized state – superstate and a decentralized union, resembling something of a “medieval Empire”