The current crisis of the project of European integration places pressure on and raises expectations concerning the interdisciplinary European Studies community. Looking back at the history of political ideas that informed the project of European integration, the article critically discusses how a new (or renewed) narrative for Europe can be constructed from below and not imposed from above. It seeks new integration dynamics in the ways in which popular discontent finds expression in contemporary Europe, in which citizens experience European integration as crisis and trauma, and in which citizens
themselves envision the major challenges ahead. In collecting the voice of popular discontent, we find that citizens’ dissatisfaction and frustration with European integration are related to deficits in the democratic process and efficiency of governance, increased inequalities at a global scale and challenges to truth and rationality. Visions of ‘alternative Europe’ do in this sense embrace the old Enlightenment promise and do not fundamentally reject it.