E
urope, like every political entity, has its own founding mythology – that of the Founding Fathers who understood in the aftermath of a bloody war that "never again" would only have meaning the day European nations finally agreed to form "an ever closer union" (as stated in the preamble of the Treaty on European Union). A generation after the fall of Europe's empires, the idea of federation, conceived by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Emmanuel Kant (1724-1804), found its path.
The historical truth, however, is more prosaic. In reality, European integration only happened because the main states of Western Europe recognized their own weakness and the need to work together to slow their inexorable decline. This led to a turbulent journey, driven more by external necessities than by a great internal impetus. Europe only managed to overcome its internal tensions when it felt the urgent need to respond to global changes: the Cold War in the 1950s, decolonization in the 1960s, the loss of economic leadership in the 1970s, the loss of monetary sovereignty in the 1980s, the collapse of the Soviet empire in the 1990s, the failure of financial capitalism in the 2000s and, since then, the climate, energy and health crises.
