ABSTRACT
Stefan Elbe Plato once suggested that one could not imagine a city where the idea of a city was completely lost and no longer recognizable at all. Over two thousand years later, rummaging amidst the ashes of the Second World War, the architects of the emerging European community confronted this same question – albeit, of course, on a much larger scale. Would it be possible to create a genuine European political community without articulating a common idea of Europe that the various peoples of Europe could collectively embrace? Despite initially opting for a functionalist strategy revolving around economic and technical cooperation, there was no doubt in the minds of founding fathers like Robert Schuman that ‘Europe cannot and must not remain an economic and technocratic undertaking. It must have a soul, awareness of its historical affinities and its present and future responsibilities and political determination in the service of a single human ideal’ (Schuman 1963: 48, 78). Just as with Plato’s city, the European Union would eventually have to advance an inspiring idea of Europe if it was not just to remain an expedient economic and institutional arrangement, but was also to serve as the basis for cultivating a deeper European community. Following decades of incremental and at times contradictory progress, this long awaited opportunity to define the contours of the European soul, and ‘to forge a common destiny’ (Preamble to the European Constitution), finally emerged on October 29, 2004 when delegates representing the member states of the European Union agreed and signed the text of the European Constitution.
