There is no culture that is both general throughout Europe and unique to Europe. So we cannot speak of a ‘European civilization’ in the same sense as in phrases such as ‘Chinese civilization’ or ‘Jewish civilization’ or ‘French civilization’. It is therefore prudent not to appeal to the concept of a European civilization in an attempt to justify the attempt to create a European Union or to accelerate the process of Europe-wide state-building. Nor should we feel constrained by such a concept: the future of a European Union should not be influenced by current or traditional ideas of what European civilization is, since such ideas are mistaken: it can be as protean and pluralistic as we wish to make it.

The importance of recent scientific discoveries concerning genetics has a perturbing effect on the legal relations governing society. There is a case for the definition of a special status concerning genetic information – an adaptation of the rules concerning medical information, a proper framework for the activity of bio-banks and a strict definition of the conditions of access to genetic information that allows for identification of a person for non-medical reasons. It would be useful to formulate some proposals of principle to initiate a discussion that must involve the scientific community.

Becoming a native listener is the necessary precursor to becoming a native speaker. Babies in the first year of life undertake a remarkable amount of work; by the time they begin to speak, they have perceptually mastered the phonological repertoire and phoneme co-occurrence probabilities of the native language, and they can locate familiar word-forms in novel continuous-speech contexts. The skills acquired at this early stage form a necessary part of adult listening. However, the same native listening skills also underlie problems in listening to a late-acquired non-native language, accounting for why in such a case listening (an innate ability) is sometimes paradoxically more difficult than, for instance, reading (a learned ability).

Social and cultural changes that have taken place since the 1960s have had a major impact, in particular on the lives of young adults, but they have also affected the living conditions and opportunities of older adults. The presentation of a selection of relevant data about elderly people's demographic position in different countries of Europe is central in the second section. In the final section results of a Dutch survey are provided and information about new flexible forms of living arrangements when starting a new partner relationship after the age of fifty, are presented and discussed

The war-generation dealt with the Holocaust as a part of the spectrum of crimes inflicted by the Hitler regime on humanity. The postwar generation, which bore no responsibility, even as neutral witnesses or accomplices, saw it as a special monstrosity; Auschwitz has been integrated into their cultural heritage. In education this means that an obligation of remembrance can provoke reactions of boredom, irritation or worse, since youth is confronted daily with other problems. But remembrance should not be marginal in school history.

The concept of moral space is presented here, in the arguments of classical authors who treated the decay of moral space as an inevitable cost of modernity. Three areas are identified where the decay of moral space is manifested in our period of ‘late modernity’. They are: violent crime, distrust and cynicism, and the vanishing of social capital. Paradoxically, however, opportunities to overcome the current moral void are discovered in the very traits of modernity: reflexiveness and globalization. They allow the process of moral healing through the reconstitution of primordial communities, ethnic, national, religious, in an open, tolerant and ecumenical manner, as well as the constitution of new communities of universalist and global reach.

The beginning of political and economic liberalism is distrust. This claim is clearer for economic liberalism than for political liberalism because it is overtly foundational in economic liberalism, which was directed against the intrusions of the state in economic affairs. Those intrusions typically had the obvious purpose of securing economic advantages for some by restricting opportunities for others, although some of them may have been merely capricious or ignorantly intended. The hostility to such economic intrusions led to the form of the American constitution, with its principal purpose to restrict government and its actions in the economy or, in the lexicon of the time, in commerce. James Madison saw the creation of an open economy or untrammelled commerce as the main achievement of the new constitution.

An important proportion of citizens do not manifest confidence in many basic institutions (parliaments, parties, unions, army, public bureaucracies, big business, courts, ecclesiastic hierarchy, police) nor in the political class. Such a deficit of trust is attested by a wealth of empirical data. Nonetheless, the legitimacy of democratic regimes is not challenged: European citizens do not conceive realistically of an alternative system of government. A new counter-power is playing an increasing and crucial role in advanced pluralist democracies – that of magistrates and journalists combined. France and Italy are considered as typical cases, concerning in particular corruption at the highest level of the State and society. What types of citizens are needed in advanced democracies? Ignorant, naive, deferential, credulous, believers in myths or well informed, rationally distrustful citizens? Today, democracy is permanently under the supervision of the public, as attested by surveys conducted periodically.

Symbolic construction of the state identity is analysed, along with the symbolic politics of the state toward the past. The great systemic change is conceived as a symbolic transformation where the growth of semiotic behaviour is clearly noticeable. The analysis deals with the changes in the public holidays calendar in Poland: the communist symbolic strategies, symbolic politics of the Solidarity movement and the anti-politics of symbolization in the third Republic of Poland. It discusses problems of the symbolic control of historicity.

Social change is taking place today with enormous acceleration. The globalization of politics, economy, and culture, changes in information technology and the revolution in genetic engineering are the major transforming powers. They create a complex of change and have an effect on the individual as well as the community. Known structures are coming apart and this evokes feelings of fear. However, spaces of opportunity will be opened, too. They can be used if (what we call) post-traditional ligatures constitute a new basis of social embedding. Examples of such bondings, which are more flexible and (to a large extent) self-created, are mentioned at the end of this article.