ARTURO COLOMBO

I volti dell'Europa. Idee, identità, unificazione

N. 203

Summary - By means of a comparative analysis of the main and most recent contributions (books, essays and interviews) to the debate on Europe, the author proposes an explanation of the reason why Europe has never represented a static reality but even now constitutes a complex piece of "work in progress" , a "process of becoming" that is anything but unidirectional. From this perspective - and on the basis of wide-ranging documentation - the author underlines the need to avoid limiting oneself to illustrating the nature - past and present - of the multiplicity of "ideas" of Europe, and instead, on the one hand to ascertain the current "identity" of Europe, and on the other hand to reconstruct the stages of the process of "unification" still in process. Federalism and functionalism are the main points of reference for the strategies compared. These, above all from the mid 20th century to the present day, have conditioned the difficult development of European political unity. The problem has been further complicated in recent years, given that the policy of so-called "enlargement" , above all towards the countries of the East, has raised a fundamental question: is the aim to create a greater Europe or a more united Europe? In addition to the difficulty - or, according to some, the impossibility - of reconciling these two alternatives, there is the current debate over the text of the European constitution de iure condendo, which reveals how arduous and complex is the task of reconciling the views of those who refuse to give up certain sovereign prerogatives of individual member-states and those who would like to create an effective federal system. Ortega y Gasset provides a useful image of Europe as "a swarm: many bees and only one flight" . This image has become the allegorical symbol of the great mosaic of voices and interpretations, sometimes bitterly opposed, other times happily convergent or even complementary, of which these pages give testimony with numerous bibliographical references, both Italian and non-Italian.