This is a message to Europe to do whatever it can to secure what it has achieved... At the same time, it serves as a reminder of what can be lost if the European Union collapses.

With this statement, the president of the Norwegian Nobel Committee justified the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU. The European unification process has always been a difficult undertaking. Jacques Delors used to say that those who have not lived through the post-war years need to be convinced of this, as they tend to consider the emergence of European unification an old story, an idea that has been surpassed by the changes that have taken place since then.

In recent years, a new reality has brought us new dangers, new forms of competition, new challenges, new fears. It has confronted us with the "obligation" to invent a global political life that can respond to the new stakes.

The European unification process, which is plagued not only by the debt crisis but also by a political crisis, must transcend itself. The current volume includes texts that attempt a reflection on the developments in international and European politics and the crises affecting Democracies in recent years.