What is Europe? Let us not talk about identity, a term that should always be handled with caution: let us simply talk about differences. Even today, being European means first and foremost this: being born and having spent most of one's life in an environmental context determined by certain differences compared to all the other areas of the planet inhabited by populations of non-European origin. A well-known Polish historian, Krzysztof Pomian, made a list of these absolutely specific characters in his time. Here are the seven environmental, visual and aural characters typical of Europe:

1) the presence of crosses on certain buildings and in cemeteries, but also along city streets, at crossroads or at the edge of roads in the countryside;

2) a particular type of city plan and architecture with a large number of common features, e.g. a central square;

3) an alphabet that, although it comes in three variants, differs from other alphabets, from the Chinese ideographic script as well as from the Arabic alphabet;

4) the particular density of images in public spaces and the interiors of private homes;

5) the frequency, among these images, of those depicting the human figure, both male and female;

6) the sound of bells;

7) the dense presence in the territory of Greek, Roman or medieval vestiges, in the form of buildings still standing or in ruins and objects preserved in museums.

Only in Europe do we encounter certain characteristics that distinguish it from our neighbouring cultural areas. All of Europe has its own specific temporal organisation based on the week with Sunday as a public holiday; and all of it then celebrates certain festivities such as Christmas and Easter.

Again: Europeans use to refer to the Hebrew-Christian heritage, ancient Greece and ancient Rome, just as the whole continent shares the same tradition of visual arts and literature, political doctrines, basic legal norms, and the absence of any food prohibition. Today, finally, Europe is distinguished both by its secularity, which here means the separation of politics from religion and of citizenship from any confessional affiliation, and by the status of women: ‘European laws, as Pomian observed, do recognise only monogamous marriage, women are not enclosed in gynoecium or harems, they are not obliged to hide their faces or their hair. What is more, they have always played a leading role in cultural and political life'.

But Europe is itself criss-crossed by a great number of differences: for example, between the Latin West and the Greek Orthodox West, between Protestant and Catholic Europe, between countries where cities, municipal autonomy, universities and elected assemblies play a central or less important role, between the countries of the West turned towards the sea and, on the contrary, those of the Eastern part, countries of immense plains, great forests and rare cities, between the countries of tycoons and those of centuries-old feudal permanence.

It is from such a Europe of differences that the unique and special historical creature that is the state, the European system of states, was born. Different and rival, certainly, but whose rivalry never succeeded to shatter the glue represented by the original cultural unity of the continent, destined precisely in the age of states to express itself in the ius gentium and in the idea of the ‘balance of powers’. That original cultural unity also expressed itself in a continental international of scholars, which, strengthened over the centuries, would be the protagonist of two movements that would open up the path to modernity for Europe, the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution: on the one hand the political modernity of natural rights and democracy, on the other the modernity of the industrial revolution and capitalist production and, at the same time both together, the foundations of a new cultural unification of Europe that had been at work for 250 years. Only in Europe did a singular concatenation of events lead to the birth of the nation-state.

The nation-state gave rise to, or in fact coincided with, some decisive innovations for our societies. First of all, it meant the end of the age-old contrast between the culture of the elites, almost always of an aristocratic-cosmopolitan nature, basically secularised, open to novelty, and the culture of the popular masses, on the other hand steeped in localism, religiosity, and bound to traditions.

The nation-state represented an extraordinary historical case of the encounter between the top and the bottom of the social structure, under the banner of a new cultural self-identification. Self-identification prompted and made possible by a key factor: the existence of a common language and its literary productions. Both destined through the school - not by chance made compulsory for the first time in history by just such a state - to an enormous diffusion, and thus to eventually give rise to a demos with common traits. All this produced a great awakening of ideal and material energies, a chain reaction of conflicts, institutional innovations, and hopes for emancipation, on the momentum of which we all still largely live.

Political democracy also owes its existence in large part to the nation state. The idea of popular sovereignty, in fact, is unthinkable without the idea of national sovereignty, without the expansive potential inherent in the idea of national sovereignty, which implies the idea of citizenship and from census suffrage, which necessarily leads to universal suffrage.

The nation-state meant the creation of a large community of citizens. That is, of individuals governed and held together by a common historical and cultural heritage that convinces them every day to participate in common institutions and a common destiny.

For at least the last two centuries, to a greater or lesser extent, Europeans have shared the experience summarised here. How can this not be taken into account? During history, the passage of time, an enormous deposit of collective experience has thus given rise to a vast psycho-emotional construction, to a memory laden with even sentimental values. European identity, let us finally use the word, is intimately linked to this long memory.

The key point is that this identity, a product of the past, is also inevitably felt as a legacy that we wish to pass on to our successors. It is this propensity, typical of identity, to project itself from the past into the future, which has become a disruptive political fact for European construction, because this European construction started from the idea that Europe's past was in some sense dead. Of course, in the immediate post-war period it was still plausible to think that under the rubble of the conflict even the old Europe of nation states had been buried forever. That was not the case; believing it was a mistake. Just as, in my opinion, Europeanism made a mistake when it believed that the best justification for its raison d'être consisted in proclaiming the obsolescence and almost superfluity of the nation state.

In reality, European political construction has suffered and still suffers from the absence of a past-oriented identity policy. The Union has not bothered to thematise and enhance the roots common to the entire continent. It has not thought of devising any policy that would take into account the particular declinations and articulations of these roots according to the countries, the connection of these roots with today and tomorrow. Ready on every occasion to sing the praises of differences when they concern others, Europe has in a sense been ashamed of its own. But in doing so, it has forgotten that nothing new can live if it cannot refer back to something ancient. Europe has chosen to present itself with the face of its heritage, but of its most universal and abstract heritage, located, so to speak, outside of time and space. It has chosen to place its identity essentially in the firmament of principles - peace, justice, human rights - addressed indiscriminately to all, and therefore by their nature necessarily abstract and oriented exclusively to the present and the future.

But in politics, one must know how to speak to the soul. Europe has forgotten the admonition of a great European, Stefan Zweig, who in the years between the wars, wrote that if one does not speak to the ‘heart’ and ‘blood’ of Europeans, the battle against nationalism will inevitably be lost since - he added - ‘never in history has change come from the intellectual sphere or from reflection alone’.

Instead, the European elites ended up believing exactly that: that to take root and legitimise themselves in the consciousness of their citizens, the great principles and concrete benefits ensured by the Union were enough. But no political body has ever been held together by these things alone. In reality, the presence of national pasts is much broader and more important than the European institutions have so far been willing to believe.

Therefore, if something solid must arise under the name of Europe, if destiny reserves such a future for our continent, then it can only arise from the legacy of history: only in this will it also find with its full legitimacy the promise of fulfilment.

See, Europa non è solo un’idea