The European Phenomenon: History, Institutions, Politics analyzes and highlights both the uniqueness and the difficulty of the European unification project. It describes, as vividly as possible, what Robert Schuman said in 1950, that "Europe will not be made all at once or according to a single plan."

It is the result of careful research and the gathering of historical, political, and economic information, comfortably moving through four academic fields: political science, institutional analysis, economics, and history. The book is what academic language calls a "reference work": a book to which one can refer to obtain accurate, exhaustive, and well-documented information about the creation and functioning of the European Union. In twenty-one chapters, with numerous photographs, diagrams, maps, and interspersed sources, it develops in a concise and easily readable manner – even for non-experts – the European historical roots, the significant steps for the creation of the European Union, the conditions, policies, and historical events that have marked its course so far, gathering all those elements that we have more or less heard of or even experienced, but would like to know better.

It is addressed both to the general reader and to the more specialized reader who wishes to have a relatively comprehensive picture of the unification process and the functioning of this sui generis structure of the United Europe. The book can also be used as a teaching aid by students studying the subject of European integration.