Francisco Balaguer Callejón
The role of legal culture in building European identity
This paper analyses the role of legal culture, and constitutional culture in particular, in shaping European identity. It emphasises the potential of fundamental rights as instruments that guarantee people's subjective rights and as instruments of legitimisation, integration, and the formation of a political community. They create a connection to public powers and foster a sense of community around the status of citizenship, which is largely framed within European legal culture as a factor of European constitutional identity. The paper also argues that, in a democratic society, identity does not require unification or values fully shared by those participating in public debate. Rather, it requires agreement on the rules and procedures that must be followed to resolve differences and make decisions in a democratic, pluralistic society. It also requires agreement on non-debatable limits because they may violate fundamental rights. This consensus on democratic procedures and limits on the exercise of power is what we call a 'constitution', and it is this constitutional identity that Europe needs. The creation of a democratic political culture within the framework of constitutional processes that make pluralist democracy and fundamental rights possible, and which places European citizenship at the centre of the European public space, could contribute to the development of a European identity.

Elisabetta Bergamini
EU Citizenship and the Development of a European Identity: The Challenging Balance Between National Sovereignty and the Principle of Sincere Cooperation in Citizenship Attribution
This paper explores the balance between national sovereignty and the development of a European identity within the EU legal framework. While Article 4.2 TEU emphasizes the respect for national identities, the concept of European identity is only subtly referenced in the preamble, linked primarily to the EU’s foreign and security policies. The principle of sincere cooperation (Article 4.3 TEU) may serve to foster reciprocal respect and prevent unilateral actions that threaten EU cohesion. A focal case study is the EU Court of Justice ruling (2025) against Malta’s “citizenship by investment” scheme, which was deemed incompatible with EU law due to its potential to undermine the EU’s legal and political unity. The case underscores how similar schemes could erode the collective European identity, a core element of EU integration, especially considering the rights conferred by EU citizenship that could be “commercialized” under these schemes: free movement, non-discrimination, political rights, and consular protection. The ruling highlights that, although member states retain sovereignty over nationality laws, such practices must align with the EU’s principles of solidarity, mutual trust, and the functioning of the common legal order, thereby safeguarding the European identity as a shared legal and political space.

David Engels
Hesperialism - European identity between globalism and nationalism
The lecture explores Hesperialism as a civilizational alternative to the false dichotomy between globalism and nationalism. Globalism tends to dissolve grown social entities into a technocratic uniformity; nationalism isolates them in sterile particularism, often even hostility. Europe’s survival requires neither dissolution nor withdrawal, but a conscious recovery of its shared spiritual and cultural heritage. Hesperialism proposes thus an integrated vision of Europe as a moral and historical community rather than a mere market or power bloc: rooted in transcendence as well as in reason; respectful of regional and national diversity without denying our humanitarian obligations. Against the reduction of politics to economics or ideology, Hesperialism seeks to re-sacralize the European project — to make it once more the guardian of beauty, goodness and truth in a darkening world.

Manca Erzetic
Interculturality and the Crisis of European Identity
Europe today is not in crisis simply because of external pressures (e.g., migration, globalization, security etc.), but mainly because of an internal disorientation that prevents it from relating its rich historical and cultural heritage to a meaningful political future. On the one hand, there is a thousand-year-old European tradition of interculturality, which has developed at various regional levels (e.g., the area of Slovenia is a crossroads of influences from Slavic, Germanic, and Romance Europe) and has expressed a concern for the humanities, especially philosophy, literature, language, and art. The devaluation of humanistic values, which is particularly and significantly present in the current state of mind, is a consequence of the European political situation being symptomatically politically empty (e.g., the ideological left is weakened, the right is reviving itself with rhetoric from the past, and the European Parliament is becoming a theatre of symbolic conflicts where old splits are being reproduced). Paradoxically, Europe's intercultural potential – as a tool for political recuperation – remains unfulfilled. Cultural initiatives (e.g., the European capital of culture Nova Gorica – Gorizia between Slovenia and Italy) often do not address key issues such as the question of European identity, but focus on entertainment events and projects that do not question the essence of the problems. Europe needs to reflect on the political role of interculturalism, which is not merely a matter of cultural policy, but a fundamental question of the European coexistence in future. The problem is that European heritage is not only humanism, but also dehumanization, which requires a politics that will address the question of a new conceptual orientation that overcomes the ideological patterns of the 20th century and requires reflection on what politics means as care for the common good in an intercultural and post-ideological context.

Maxim Kantor
Waiting for the Renaissance
Europe is experiencing a deep reconsideration of the values that once defined it, particularly those shaped by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The present crisis reaches far beyond the economy, affecting the very cultural and aesthetic foundations that determine social cohesion and moral direction. Historically, Europe has alternated between periods of creative unity and phases of fragmentation, when both its political and artistic ideals faltered. During World War II, the dream of a united Europe became entangled with imperial and totalitarian ambitions, discrediting the concept of shared humanistic ideals. After the war, artists and intellectuals such as Picasso, Camus, Sartre, and Heinrich Böll sought to rebuild Europe’s conscience, using art and literature to shape renewed moral and cultural goals. However, the rise of postmodernism—initially a reaction against dogmatic ideologies—eventually led to the deconstruction of the very humanistic ideals it sought to protect. This prolonged skepticism weakened Europe’s aesthetic and ethical coherence, inherited from the Enlightenment. Today’s challenge is even greater: to rediscover and reinvigorate the humanistic and spiritual values that once formed Europe’s cultural foundation. Only by renewing these shared ideals—through both art and philosophy—can Europe recover its creative energy and rebuild a vision of unity grounded in dignity, reason, and beauty.

Elisabetta Nadalutti
The Reasons for Integration: Practices and Intentions in European Cross-Border Cooperation
This paper offers a philosophical and practical interpretation of European integration through the study of cross-border cooperation. Drawing inspiration from G. E. M. Anscombe’s philosophy of action and integrating Adler and Pouliot’s International Practice Theory, the article addresses a central question: why do similar European institutional regimes and instruments—such as the Interreg programmes—produce profoundly different trajectories of integration in border contexts that appear otherwise comparable? The analysis aims to show that such variability does not reflect anarchy or mere empirical heterogeneity, but rather reveals the inherently contingent nature of political and social action. From this perspective, European integration cannot be understood as a linear effect of EU policies, but as an emergent process of practical reasoning, in which institutional causes intertwine with the intentions, justifications, and purposes that actors develop within their own contexts. The diversity of outcomes does not contradict the European principle of “unity in diversity”; instead, it represents a concrete expression of it, showing how cooperation is simultaneously the product of shared structures and situated interpretations. Through a comparative analysis of various European experiences—including the Italy–Slovenia and Italy–Austria cases—the article introduces the concept of “contingent integration,” understood as a situated and non-necessary process that depends more on the practices, intentions, and interpretations of local actors than on linear institutional causality. This perspective helps explain how formally convergent practices may generate only apparent integration effects—forms of cooperation that remain confined to a formal alignment with shared structures and discourses, without producing genuine political or social convergence. In doing so, the paper provides a philosophical foundation for understanding contingency not as a deviation from an ideal model, but as a constitutive dimension of the European project itself.

Petr Osolsobě
Can Art Lead us to Virtue, or How Has the European Tradition Led to the Formation of Political Identity?
European cultural identity is a paradox; the more we discuss it, the more we are in need of it. As Aristotle noted, art and political practice are instances of imposition of form, that is, a formative activities. The decline of European arts then stems from the metaphysical divorce of the good from the true and the beautiful and by adopting ugliness and desecration almost as its final goals (cf. gr. miaron, “disgusting,” literally “dirty” or “polluted”). Aesthetic experience emerging from a representation of human action, however, can lead to virtue if (and only if) we learn to feel emotions rightly, that is, towards the right object, to the proper degree, and at the right time. Visual arts, music, literature, and drama especially can contribute to the formation and education of mature citizens; a disposition to feel emotion correctly is essential to the development of a good character and eventually to forming political identity. The modern concept of aesthetic experience (that superseded the lost transcendentals of the good and the beautiful) is often too vague. Proper education is the key; both Plato and Aristotle see education in the arts in the realm of the political; educative entertainment (diagógé) is for the adults what play or amusement (paideia) is for children. By comparing the educational power of European cultural masters (Giotto, Dante, Shakespeare) with with the current neglect of virtues in today’s educational systems, the essay argues for the need to turn to the aesthetic remnants of European history in order to build the political identity of the future.

Giuliana Parotto

Giangiacomo Vale
An Unresolved Political Identity: The European Union between Sovereignty, Federation, and Empire
The European Union is experiencing a crisis of identity and legitimacy that reflects the limits of the modern state paradigm. The tensions between sovereigntism and incomplete federalism highlight the difficulty of conceiving a coherent European political identity within the categories of the nation-state and sovereignty. Both the sovereigntist and the federalist approaches, despite being politically opposed, share the same conceptual assumption: the projection of the state model onto Europe. This essay proposes to explore a different interpretive paradigm: that of empire, understood as a political form based on plurality, the inclusion of difference, and composite, negotiated legitimacy. Unlike the state, the empire does not unify but integrates; it exists through fluid borders, legal pluralism, and overlapping identities. From this perspective, the European Union exhibits structural traits similar to a “neo-medieval empire”: polycentrism of power, normative pluralism, overlapping jurisdictions, and the absence of a sovereign center. The paradigm of empire thus allows us to view the EU not as an unfinished state-building project, but as an alternative political form capable of managing complexity and diversity without reducing them to unity.

Harald Wydra
The limits of European identity – A cultural memory of borders
The promise to move towards an ever closer union of the peoples of Europe is intriguing but strangely undefined. This paper explores hopes to expand the frontiers of Europe with a view to how the political psychology of borders has been shaped by cultural memory. The impenetrable frontier of the Iron Curtain was a key condition for opening borders and spaces inside the European Community. Political integration transcended borders but also met significant resistance, including Brexit or so-called right-wing populism. Today, intentions to expand eastwards advance by a contradictory movement. The EU external borders are closing, whilst prospective enlargement requires expanding frontiers into post-imperial spaces with strong national identity but a cultural memory of fear for survival, encirclement, and existential insecurity. Can the political will for EU enlargement be reconciled with liminal fluidity, fragile borders, and opening front lines? Can a post-sovereign Europe create moral closeness around a sacred core without maintaining the moral distance from outsiders? Can there be a European identity without limits?

Lamberto Zannier
The EU foreign, Security, and Defence Policy Under Strain at a Time of Crisis
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has relaunched the debate about European defence. However, almost 4 years down the line, despite growing concerns about the security of EU states closer to Russia, little progress has been made. Why so?
The starting point has to be the weakness of EU foreign policy tools. Traditionally, EU members have resisted limitations to their national sovereignty when it comes to foreign policy priorities.  Decisions are made on the basis of consensus, so the lowest common denominator is the rule. This has become even more challenging following successive waves of enlargement mainly dictated by economic and trade considerations. In addition, the impact of geopolitics has progressively affected EU’s decision making process in this domain. Moreover, structural imbalances remain, e.g. with 1 member State (previously, 2) as permanent member of the UNSC and no seat (or even UN membership) for the EU as such.
Reticence towards limitations to national sovereignty, in addition to concerns related to protecting national defence industry, applies also to the security and defence sphere. EU mechanisms in the area of defence are largely ineffective and the successive shared strategies are generic and open to differing interpretations. In addition, building a common defence without clear shared foreign policy goals is in itself challenging when it comes to decisions on possible future deployments. NATO remains dominated by the US and there is no effective EU caucus.
Revitalising EU foreign, security and defence policies will require courageous, bold steps. The rule of consensus should be replaced by majority decision-making, even at the cost of reconsidering ideas for a EU at 2 speeds, with a core group of countries moving ahead and the others with the option of joining then when ready. Cooperation in the field of defence production should go beyond arrangements between individual industrial groups and reach the level of governmental strategies on effective cooperation and division of labour among countries.