Photo Gallery Project Europe
Many feel that if the EU is to survive, residents of its 27 member countries need to develop a stronger sense of a common European identity. But is it even possible to forge a European nation? Here, an organizer checks flags ahead of an EU meeting in Portlaoise, Ireland.
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a Green member of the European Parliament, is one of the EU's most passionate supporters. "There will be a United States of Europe," he says, "I'm sure of that."
Legendary German philosopher Jürgen Habermas is one of the leading thinkers on the future of the EU. "The claim that there is no European nation contradicts the systemic convergence of multicultural global society," he says.
The euro crisis has called the future of the EU into doubt.
The EU is still too influenced by national concerns. Here, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
A view of Europe by night: Academics across the continent are developing models for a functioning European democracy, a body politic whose citizens would feel and act as "Europeans" rather than members of an individual nation-state.
