History of the European Idea

Europe's present is marked by doubts, questions, certainties, but especially by uncertainties. Starting from these ideas, the attempt to understand the present leads us to numerous research paths, towards the questioning of the past in order to understand the present, which in turn conditions the future. In our opinion, by following this course, students must understand the fact that the structure, which is in the process of articulation, namely the European Union, represents the moment of an evolution. Once this issue has been understood, it should be easy to perceive the nature of the effort for the unification of Europe:"the pluralism of interests and the unyielding need for harmonization of interests; the implicit risk of a policy of forced harmonization; the importance of each Member State's cultural patrimony and the foundations of the aspiration to this deep plan of accomplishing unity" (I. Ciuperca). A look back will enable a more clear interpretation of the current situation. Thus, for a better understanding of the current realities, it is recommended to look through the evolution of the idea of Europe, from its beginnings until the first half of the 20th century.

Autorentext

Alina Stoica studied computer science at University Politehnica, Bucarest, and at Ecole Polytechnique, France. She obtained her PhD degree in data mining and graph algorithms applied to large social networks from University Paris 7. During her PhD she worked at Orange Labs. Currently she is a research engineer at EDF R&D, France.