The European Union in Turbulent Times: Geopolitical Context, Internal Fragilities and Different Visions of Europe

Following the 2024 European elections, the European Union (EU) has pursued a strategyof institutional continuity to address growing geopolitical instability and intensifying do-mestic contestation, especially from populist and radical-right forces. By doing this, theEU prioritised leadership stability, preserved its pro-European parliamentary majorityand reaffirmed its core policy agenda (Baldini et al., 2024). However, beneath this surfaceof continuity, cracks in the political and normative foundations of European integrationhave widened. Across the continent, mainstream parties continue to lose ground to anincreasingly diverse array of challengers who question the EU’s trajectory and, more spe-cifically, its compatibility with national interests. Although no major political forcecurrently advocates EU withdrawal, the commitment to further integration has becomenotably more fragile. In keeping with the tradition of the Annual Review (AR) of theEU of the Journal of Common Market Studies, this editorial reflects on the geopolitical,institutional and electoral developments shaping the Union in 2024 and the first half of2025. The increasingly complex and overlapping nature of contemporary crises compli-cates the distinction between retrospective analysis and forward-looking reflection. Muchof what has unfolded cannot be understood as a series of isolated events. Instead, thesedevelopments represent the intensification of structural transformations that have beenreshaping the EU for over a decade (Fabbrini, 2019; Schimmelfennig, 2024). Whilst pre-senting the main developments and dynamics that have characterised the EU during2024, this editorial introduces additional topics and issues to be explored in detail inthe next AR.