A Frontierless Continent: History of an Idea and Its Realization

Abstract

Although it has never aroused the collective fervour typical of great changes, European integration is the most revolutionary political transformation that has occurred in the West since the Second World War. The exceptional nature of this process is also evident if one adopts a longer diachronic perspective. Rarely — perhaps never — in history has sovereignty been peacefully transferred from polities as strong as the modern European nation states to other and broader organizations.¹ Should the world one day achieve a post-national order, it is very likely that Europe will have marked out the path.