Conclusion

Europe—a defence

Amy E. Varela

pp. 302-306

in: Gérard Delanty, Formations of European modernity, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

The idea of Europe has now become a reality in a number of very specific senses and which are a challenge to some of the conventional conceptions of the meaning of Europe, The traditional view is that the primary reality is the nation-state and that Europe is nothing much more than an aggregation of largely separate nations. This is also one of the most common ways the history of Europe has been written: an aggregation of national histories. To the extent to which it has any meaning Europe is generally regarded as synonymous with the idea of Lhe West and a vague notion of civilization, Willi the rise of European Union, Europe has acquired a new political meaning as a geopolitical entity. However, the general tendency is also to see this embodiment of the idea of Europe as epiphenomenal with nations as constituting the primary reality. Although this view is becoming increasingly challenged by those who see the project of European integration as contesting many of the older assumptions about national autonomy, such perspectives are limited by a narrow focus on the institutional form of the EU. The argument developed in this book is rather that Europe can itself be seen as having a structural form as opposed to being a derivative of nations or an external dimension. In this view, a long-run historical consideration of Europe is needed in order to discern the nature of its specificity, which is neither to be found in national trajectories nor in the project of European integration. This means, too, that any notion of the "crisis of Europe" must be placed in a broader historical context than that of the recent past.