In Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality, Delanty (1995: vii) complained that, whereas many works dealt with the “Orient” as an invention of Europe, almost nothing existed on the idea of “Europe”: In his view, the common political roof embodied by the European Communities and the European Union was a construction in need of critical reassessment. More than fifteen years have passed since his seminal book was published, and many authors have taken up the challenge of understanding the meaning of “Europe” and how it was historically and thematically constructed to reinforce a sense of cohesion beyond national allegiances (Shore 2000; Passerini 2003; Stråth 2000a,b; Joas and Wiegandt 2005; Molho and Ramada Curto 2007; Persson and Stråth 2007).

In the course of this book, we have focused on myths and practices of collective remembrance as sites for the construction of a European identity. In doing so, we have alluded to the importance of religion, particularly in the last “sequences of Europe” emerging in European textbooks (Chapter 5). In this concluding chapter, we further analyze this point. As we discussed in Chapter 5, “Europe” began as a political project aimed at creating a sense of common identity in the aftermath of the Second World War, first designed around economic issues (in the early 1950s), then progressively enlarged to include other more political items, and merging finally into a single Union in 1993. The creation of this supranational entity has involved the establishment of an increasing array of domains in which Europeans are invited to feel part of a community of fate (Schicksalsgemeinschaft), including attempts to adopt a draft European Constitution in 2004.