ABSTRACT
For some, the cosmopolitan character of Europe in general, and the EU in particular, is not in question. Is Europe not par excellence the region where humans emancipated themselves from unreflected traditions and primordial loyalties and preached, sometimes even practised, ideas of the brotherhood of man or, as we would now say, the siblinghood of humanity? And is European integration not by definition a cosmopolitan project, marked in its current version by the powerful image of the West German and French coal and steel industries fused together in the ECSC a mere half decade after the end of the War?
