Abstract

At a moment when a new crisis threatens Europe—a crisis containing, among other ingredients, COVID-19, a faltering economy, immigration and Brexit—the European Union (EU)’s motto ‘Europe united in diversity’ would appear progressively less attainable. This paper submits that the European ideal is still both desirable and possible through the fostering of political unity at the constitutional (regime) level by using the notions of analogical state and analogical culture, and at the community level by the enablement of public sphere secularity and relational interculturalism. These concepts share the intuition that the EU should be envisaged in a more flexible manner, and carry several policy implications for the future of European integration.