ABSTRACT
Two devastating wars precipitated Europe’s demise in the in the first half of the 20th century. In order to create a new future the EU had to learn a few lessons from history. The emergence of a new value system was a complex, continuous and contingent process, pushed by external pressure and a general consensus about what not to repeat. The essay will focus on this long-term project of the EU in general and on four lessons in particular that have shaped the political and moral orientation of its member-states and citizens. These lessons, however, reverberate differently in different states and in times of financial crisis, mass migration and populism they are easily forgotten or explicitly opposed. The EU was created as an experiment and its trajectory has become more and more precarious. It is therefore all the more important to recall the historical moments of these lessons and to reinstall them as a shared orientation for a common future.
