In the introduction to the new special issue, they revisit and revise their analytical framework, and review how well it stands up to a second polycrisis, centred around the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Synthesizing the findings of the other contributions to the special issue, they conclude that the EU has clearly proved more resilient to the potential negative consequences of politicisation than many commentators had expected at the beginning of the long polycrisis decade that began with the euro and the refugee/migration crises.

This introduction and special issue follow up on the authors’ previous joint work on ‘The EU Beyond the Polycrisis? Integration and Politicisation in an Age of Shifting Cleavages’, published as a special issue of JEPP in 2019, also available in Open Access.

The other contributions to the special issue, which have all been published online, include articles by Christian Rauh and Michal Parizek; Francesco Nicoli, David van der Duin, Brian Burgoon, Theresa Kuhn, Roel Beetsma, Anniek de Ruijter,  et al.; Lukas Hetzer and Brian Burgoon; Dmytro Panchuk; Christian Freudlsperger, Frank Schimmelfennig et al.; Brigid Laffan; Sandrino Smeets; Catherine Hoeffler, Stefanie Hoffman, and Frederic Merand; David Bokhorst and Magnus Schoeller; Marta Migliorati; and Edgars Eihmanis.

The contributions in this collection were originally presented and discussed at ACES’ supported workshop in March 2023.