This is a message to Europe to do whatever it can to ensure 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 integration process has always been a difficult endeavor. Jacques Delors used to say that it is necessary to convince those who, having not lived through the post-war years, tend to consider the emergence of European integration as old history, an idea that has been surpassed by the changes that have occurred 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 integration process, which is beset not only by the debt crisis but also by a political crisis, must transcend.

The present volume includes texts that reflect on the developments in international and European politics and the crises that have been affecting democracies in recent years.