ABSTRACT
This handbook comes at a crucial moment in time. It was finalized on Europe Day, exactly 70 years after Robert Schuman underlined the need for ‘a united Europe’. 1 At the same time, that same Europe is confronted with the withdrawal of one of its Member States. Schuman argued that ‘Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.’ These days, European solidarity is challenged and, indeed, has not proven capable of keeping all Member States on board. With his ‘realisation of the first concrete foundation of a European federation indispensable to the preservation of peace’, Schuman could not have predicted some Member States would end up seeing close European cooperation as something standing in the way of their own national and global ambitions. 2
