While after the failure of the Constitution for Europe, the financial crisis and the subsequent austerity phase promoted the nation-state element in Europe, the Covid-19 crisis, not least through the Recovery Plan, serves in the last analysis to bolster the European dimension. The appeals of the Federal Constitutional Court in 2020 and 2021 confirm this analysis, but at the same time make clear the extent to which a legal reorganisation of competences at the European level is necessary. This should rest on the idea of subsidiarity and entail a geopolitical strengthening of the EU, even without the fiction of a European democratic sovereign as the basis of constitutional federalism, which has failed for the time being. The now necessary regulation of socio-political aspects, arising in particular from the migrant and health crises, could be approached with a modified concept of a social market economy. This does not diminish the value of the goal of a united Europe, but it also avoids trying to achieve it too quickly, without the backing of citizens and states, and at the price of a multi-speed Europe.

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