Jean-Claude Piris served as the Legal Counsel of the Council of the EU and Director General of its Legal Service from 1988 to 2010. He is an Honorary French Conseiller d'Etat, a former diplomat at the UN and the former Director of Legal Affairs of the OCED. He was the Legal Advisor of the successive intergovernmental conferences which negotiated and adopted the treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice, the Constitutional Treaty and, finally, the Lisbon Treaty. He was also Senior Emile Noël Fellow and Straus Institute Fellow at New York University.

• Introduction; 1. The continuing need for a strong EU in the foreseeable future; 2. An assessment of the present situation of the EU; 3. First option: substantially revising the EU treaties; 4. Second option: continuing on the present path while developing further closer cooperation; 5. Third option: politically progressing towards a two-speed Europe; 6. Fourth option: legally building a two-speed Europe; Conclusion.

'[The reader] will learn much along the way, gaining legal and historical perspective on different forms of co-operation between member states outside, inside and alongside the EU's own treaties … [Piris] is a great teacher. As the best professors do, he challenges and provokes and gets us arguing.' European Voice