We are now four weeks away from the 2014 elections to the European Parliament. Most of the continent will be voting on Sunday 25 May, though some countries will be voting as early as the Thursday before (check the European Parliament website for the voting day in each country). It's been a challenging session for the EU since the last election in 2009, as the global banking crisis turned into the sovereign debt crisis and the single currency, as well as the EU itself at one point, were threatened with extinction. Even now, in 2014, many member states are still having to push through painful austerity as they bring down the levels of their deficits, unemployment is still stubbornly high in southern Europe, and some countries are even looking at a real risk of deflation.
But it wasn't all bad news, though. Instead of the Eurozone completely disintegrating, as appeared possible at the end of 2011, its membership grew by two states (Estonia in 2011 and Latvia in 2014), and Croatia became the 28th member of the EU in 2013. Many steps have also been taken to strengthen the monetary union between the 18 Eurozone members to prevent the sovereign debt crisis from reoccurring. Generally speaking, Europe is becoming more closely integrated - but is that what it wants?
