ABSTRACT
The new Europe is the old Europe of geopolitics. It once more matters-as it hardly did in the time of the Cold War, when two power-blocks divided the continent and dominated its peripheries, and “international” was the natural adjective of dissidence and counter-culture-where you are from (as an individual) and what your geographical location is (as a country, a nation, a people). Europe is rediscovering its roots, its regions, its local customs, ethnic identities, religious, cultural and culinary specifi cs. The fi rst point to note about this new Europe is to beware of hyphenation, whether it is the “old” political hyphenation of the two founding nations of the European Union, whose stability and prosperity, it is said, still rest on the “entente Franco-Allemande,” or the now politically correct hyphenation of more recent nationals in Europe, such as French-Arab, Dutch-Moroccan, or German-Turkish. In both cases, it may turn out that hyphenation is a mis-attribution and when considered as the solution to Europe’s current identity crisis, merely compounding the problem it is supposed to solve.
