Abstract
Beyond the institutional chronicle of European construction, the narrative of Europe as a historical invention poses formidable narrative and civic challenges. Today, we can no longer pretend to write a European novel as smooth and homogeneous as national novels, as if the European idea developed, unfolded, was lost and found again, but always remained identical to itself. By pluralizing the political inventions of which Europe is the bearer, and by proposing to draw up a more complete inventory of them over the long term, we will seek to highlight, if not the invariance of an identity, at least the persistence of a tradition - that, precisely, of political inventiveness.
