Gerard Delanty’s central thesis is that Europeans should not worry about the resurgence of nationalism.

He distinguishes a new kind of nationalism exemplified by recent developments in Scotland and Catalonia and suggests these phenomena pose more of a threat to national polities than they do to the institutions of the EU.

The rise of individualism, he argues, has undermined the appeal of collective identities including a collective European identity. He points to a new form of identification with a more cosmopolitan vision of Europe among young Europeans. In my response, I would like to set out three stages in the development of modern Europe to contrast with the three phases of development of nationalism that Gerard Delanty has described.

I call Europe1 the Europe of post-war reconstruction, the Europe of nations. The Europe of 1945 was a savage continent. Those who survived could not return to homes which had been destroyed by the occupation and by the war. If nations are defined by territory as Delanty asserts, then in many cases these nations had ceased to exist. Those who had no homeland to return to set out instead in search of a new country, a country called Europe. Europe was reborn in the European Coal and Steel Community, through the pooling of sovereignty, the removal of borders, the sharing of strategic industries – the bedrock of peaceful coexistence in Europe.

This Europe, Europe1, is not in question, despite the rise of nationalism. Marine Le Pen might take France out of the euro, but she will never take France out of the EU. Europe1 is of existential importance to all French people. Le Pen and her supporters know this very well. Ironically, the EU has just provided a platform for nationalists as Delanty points out. The EU can itself be seen as an expression of a new kind of nationalism – one that recognises that the greatest national interest any member state can have is the preservation of peace.

Europe2 emerges with the development of the single market. Not only would goods and services be traded freely but the factors of production, labour and capital now became mobile, too. The fall of the Berlin Wall was widely seen at the time as the ‘end of history’, the ideological defeat of communism.