The European avant-garde has a sense and a legitimacy only if it is inspired by a strategic vision, aiming to the reinforcement of all the aspects of European sovereignty. Only such a project will be able to contribute to the safeguarding of a "certain idea of Europe": that of a fully-fledged geopolitical actor able to guarantee our security, to promote our values and our interests and to defend our economic, social, environmental and cultural model.

The present paper offers a brief overview of the terminological-historical, theoretical and political aspects of “differentiated integration” scenarios. It argues that although “flexibility” is the only way to consolidate the acquis and pursue the integration project, differentiation does not automatically lead to a more ambitious, more powerful and more European Europe. In order to ensure this outcome, the flexibility pioneers must pay particular attention to two paramount criteria.

First of all, it is worth underlining that neither the French elections of 2007, nor those in the United States in 2008 are bound to alter in a notable way - i.e. in addition to the gestures and effect-based announcements scheduled for these occasions - the traditional orientations of the two countries’ foreign and security policies. Likewise, the calvaries of the new European treaty, the actual rhythm of the EU’s blind rush to enlargement, and the endless transatlantic initiatives based on stylistic changes in Washington are equally secondary from the point of view of the real evolutions in European integration and in our relationship with the United States.

Europe today is characterized by a strategic and identity-related vagueness: she is without geographical and political outlines. Her geographical borders are still imprecise towards the East and South, as well as towards the West. As for European sovereignty, it is in a sort of no man’s land: the Member States abandon entire sectors of their national sovereignty without there being anything, at a European level, resembling a political entity ready and able to defend Europeans’ capacity to decide and to act autonomously.

The present analysis examines one of the crucial points of the debates on the European Union’s evolution, namely the issue of "differentiation". With respect to this integration approach, commonly known under the names of "multi-speed Europe", "hard core" or "variable geometry", the paper underlines the fact that in itself this is neither a positive, nor a negative category. Whether increasing differentiation will lead to the disintegration or the revitalization of the integration depends, in fine, on two things: in the service of which policy and applying which modalities these flexibility measures will be put in practice.

There is only one question worth asking in all this chaos surrounding the constitutional treaty. It is to know whether this crisis is finally "the" crisis. The answer depends on the political will of the Member States’ leaders, that of France and Germany in the first place. The suffering is the result of not merely the last, but of all past enlargements. The Heads of State and government of the Six, in 1969 in the Hague, only gave their assent for the opening of the accession negotiations "insofar as the candidate States accept the treaties and their political finalities".