Since 1950, Europe has developed its own brand of peace. The European communities were not born as the United Nations, as a fully formed machinery of peace. Instead, as Robert Schuman had recommended, they grew out organically and without a single plan, “through concrete achievements which create a de facto solidarity”. What emerged decades later, in 1992, was a European Union of states, which established a system of peaceful coexistence among its member-states.

Yet, has the EU truly achieved a union of its citizens? Part 2 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the EU establishes a European citizenship, with passports and civic rights; citizenship remains, however, largely an administrative notion. According to Eurobarometer, no actual “European public opinion” has emerged yet, as evidenced by the wide differences of perception by country.

Of course, creating a moral citizenry of the EU with a sense of loyalty and belonging to a ‘European common home’, does present a formidable set of challenges. One temptation would be to turn to the traditional nation-state model, built on a common language, a common culture, and the awareness of a common past, often exalted by a fight for independence against a foreign empire. Those methods of nation-building were applied in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in all countries from France, Italy and Germany to Bulgaria and Romania. They relied on centralized education systems to homogenize the population by teaching one language in schools and by discarding others; they called for teaching a national history that glorified heroes (who were often military commanders).

Some attempts have been made, here and there, to reinvent a “European identity”, as a resistance fight against foreign invaders, allegedly Muslim enemies of Christianity. Such an identity would be contrived and controversial in the EU bloc, which is a supra-national entity with 24 official languages. This is not only because the historical existence of such a fracture line is highly dubious. Its primary liability is that it would introduce a normative definition of European citizenship based on religious affiliation or tradition. Taking that route would be plainly in contradiction with the EU’s values of diversity and non-discrimination and would violate the Charter of Fundamental Rights. It would also create a foreign policy problem in the EU’s neighbourhood: it would encourage ideological hostility against Turkey and neighbouring countries in Northern Africa and the Middle East, which would be incompatible with the pursuit of peace.

Indeed, the legal and administrative makeup of the EU aims to prevent the repetition of the evils of World War II, which were, in the words of Winston Churchill: “frightful nationalistic quarrels (…) which we have seen (…) wreck the peace and mar the prospects of all mankind.”

Furthermore, introducing a European identity would clash with the bloc’s motto United in Diversity. That term ‘identity’, taken literally, would imply that all Europeans should have common cultural or ethnic characteristics that set them apart from all other people of Earth and defines them against the rest of the world. In that case, which language, cultural norms, and physical traits should be selected as quintessentially ‘European’? Enforcing such standards could become an arbitrary act that would smack of ‘Brussel imperialism’ since it would violate the national identities of the member-states. Indeed, Robert Schuman stated in 1949: “But Europe cannot wait for definition, for the end of that controversy; she does, in fact, define its boundaries by the will of its peoples.”

This has occasionally led to the belief that the EU suffers from an identity deficit. The problem could be, however, with the concept of identity itself. Could there be a better way to create a sense of shared belonging that does not rely on a common, pre-existing ‘identity’?

I believe that, yes, that should be possible. The alternative would be to forge a European conscience as a grass-roots movement, which would be based on the EU’s aim of peace and its set of common values, which are not in the past but in the present and future. A commonly accepted definition for European conscience is “the awareness of the necessity to make Europe (in a political sense)”, and therefore to avoid future wars on the continent. This is something that might require extending the mantle of Pax Europeana further east, to countries such as Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova.

Needless to say, the real challenge would be to make that European conscience accessible to every European citizen of every country and social group. That would require a concerted effort at public outreach, as well as education of the new generations on the aim of peace.

The EU’s aim of peace is so powerful that it seems paradoxical that it has been neglected for so long in the communication from the EU to its citizens. Experience demonstrates that a history lesson with images of the ruins of Warsaw or Berlin in May 1945 could be sufficient to convince a young audience of why the European construction process had to be started in 1950. Similarly, the bombings of Mariupol or Karkhiv in 2022 are the best evidence of why the continued existence of a European Union remains the best guarantee of peace for half a billion people on this planet.