The aim of the paper is to analyse the sources of the crisis of legitimacy of the EU from the perspective of the intergovernmental paradigm. The paper also focuses on the nature of this crisis and the possibilities of increasing the legitimacy of the EU. The author claims that the crisis of legitimacy is a result of the fact that there is “too much Europe”, not “too little”. According to Andrew Moravcsik’s approach to intergovernmentalism, the EU crisis is a result of feeling that the European Union has ceased to be seen as an effective tool for realising the interests of the states, or that the states started to define their preferences in the integration process in an unreasonable way.
This article reflects on the issue of legitimacy and attitudes of the young generation (16–19 years old) towards the European integration. The authors decided to divide the text into two parts, the first of which consists of the theoretical and historical approach to the problem of the legitimacy of European integration and the narrative about Europe, and the second presents the main conclusions and problems identified during the work of authors with the youth, and the implementation of the international Jean Monnet Network project MoreEU: More Europe to overcome the crisis. Confrontation of these two parts has made it clear that traditional justification of the legitimacy of the integration project does not speak to the contemporary youth, and that this is precisely in this age group that we can clearly see the crisis of the legitimacy of the European Union.
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