Towards a win-win package deal and more effective decision-making in a union faced with disruptive change

In order to mitigate its ‘poly-crisis’ of the past decade, the European Union (EU) and its member states have made considerable progress in affected policy areas so that it now seems better prepared for future crises. However, this contribution argues that there is still a lot of unfinished business and a number of fundamental challenges, which the EU and its member states will have to address for a successful future: a set of socioeconomic and environmental challenges, illiberalism and challenges to the rule of law and geopolitical challenges, as well as increasing fragmentation among and polarisation within member states and a lack of support from citizens. In order to move forward, this chapter argues that there is the need for a comprehensive win-win package deal, which will lead to advancing across a large number of policy areas (scenario 5 of the Commission White Paper). Here, the Conference on the Future of Europe could be an important puzzle piece by bridging the gap between the different camps and contributing to reestablishing trust among member states and citizens. The EU should also make use of new decision-making methods that have proven successful in recent years, such as the so-called ‘Brexit method’ and permanent inclusion of citizens. Finally, we argue that, considering the deep divisions among member states in certain areas, going forward in smaller groups (scenario 3) will be inevitable.