In these nervous times, there is no thing that alone could lead to collective reassurance, namely Europe. The crises follow one another so quickly that you can barely clear your head and don’t even notice that it is missing. The whole election campaign avoids the discourse about Europe, therefore looks at our problems individually, one after the other and always fragmented nationally – like a giant puzzle out of a plastic bag: More and more colorful pieces increase confusion when the packaging is missing and you don’t know what it will be target. There are the consequences of climate change, our defensive situation in foreign policy, the infrastructure deficits, the lack of momentum and innovation and of course the pandemic. The problem descriptions reach an audience that slowly no longer wants to get out of the snail shell because the available political instruments of the aging nation-states no longer fit the dimension of the problems.