But what shape could reform take? The current system is not made for speed or dynamism. It was designed to prevent any single power from dominating. Now Germany has evolved by default into the leadership position but is reluctant to lead. The smaller countries are suspicious about conceding power to Germany and view with some unease the likely renewal of the Franco-German powerhouse that Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle set in motion in the 1960s with an understanding to synchronize their countries’ roles in providing leadership on the Continent.

The European Council, created in 1974 and composed of leaders of the member countries, has become the most potent body in the union, though the council's centrifugal tendencies are constrained by the centralizing leanings of the European Union Commission and Parliament.

The difficulties of arriving at a solution to equip the European Union for the challenges ahead while satisfying the often contradictory demands of 28 member states (27 when — or if — Britain completes its exit) are daunting.

If a sense of European identity has remained largely an idea and aspiration rather than a reality, it has nonetheless acquired a form of political content. “Europe,” in the eyes of most Europeans, has come to be largely synonymous (positively or negatively) with the European Union. “Europe” demarcates the countries of the bloc as an interwoven community of nations separate from the others on the European continent — mainly Russia and former members of the Soviet Union. This “Europe” is neither the “Europe of the fatherlands” favored by de Gaulle and others, nor the supranational entity that was associated with Jacques Delors. Rather, it stands as a unique entity somewhere in between. Some continue to look to an ever-widening ”Europe” incorporated in a federal European state as a utopian future. Others, increasing in number, regard “Europe” with distance, even hostility, as a foreign body impinging upon their sovereignty as nation-states.

In the first postwar decades, the need to prevent any possibility of another war was the central ambition of the emerging European Community. But that message has inevitably faded over time. This has left the “Europe” of the European Union in the eyes of many of its citizens as little more than an opaque and detached organization embodying rules and regulations that affect most people’s lives, but cannot be challenged through political engagement. That opens the door to the politics of nationalist and separatist movements. In reality, the main emotional allegiance is not to “Europe” but still to citizens’ nation-state or region (or would-be independent nation-state).

However, while the union has been unable to create a genuine sense of European identity, the dangerously aggressive, chauvinistic nationalism that spawned two world wars scarcely exists any longer, and what does has been diluted and countered by the gradual increase in transnational cooperation and interdependence.