Introduction

Unlike the famous American declaration, happiness does not appear in the founding texts of the European Union. Nevertheless, a firm belief and willingness to achieve the “well- being” and “closer relation” among European states, at least in words, seem to be at the core of the whole process of European integration: the real alternative to the national state, deemed as the historical culprit of war and division among Europeans.

Over the past few years this process has stopped: Brexit, the rise of anti- euro, nationalpopulist political parties and fears over immigration in both Eastern and Western Europe are the most acute and recent symptoms of the ongoing struggle the EU is facing.

What happened to the seeming irresistible process of a closer European Union? What about its mission to bring people together and to foster their well- being? This is a broad multifaceted question without an easy answer. However, looking at the image of success and happiness the EU has constructed and fostered over time may provide us hints on its inner contradictions and problems.

To do so, I plan to use as a case study one of EU's most successful initiatives: the Erasmus program, a student exchange project that allowed three million young European university students to study abroad in other EU member states. Erasmus has been defined as “Europe's last hope” (Makowski 2012), the “new sexual European revolution” (Riotta 2014), and even as “Erasmus- Orgasmus” (MacGregor 2012) responsible for the birth of one million babies from couples of mixed nationalities (AFP 2014).