Europe has many faces: doomed, like the victims of the seducer Jove; arrogant, like the mistress of the colonial empires; rebellious, like Marianne on the barricades. Or naively wise, like the three Belarusian Euro-optimists fighting for the right to be in the common space of peace, freedom, and cooperation.

One can have different feelings about these faces. But it is the last face—and all the moral, ideological, and institutional energy that shines through it—that has been inspiring the political creativity of people in both the western and eastern parts of the continent.

After World War II, some European societies succeeded in building the cultural and economic foundations of a postnational free and peaceful legal space. Almost half a century later, with the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Iron Curtain, a community of countries sharing common legal norms and nourished by the common spirit of solidarity of the Council of Europe emerged on this foundation.

The universal values of this project engaged peoples, local communities, and individuals from Dublin to Vladivostok, offering for the first time in human history a practical plan for lasting peace and the prosperity of all.

Even more creative was the project of political and economic unification of the European Union, which was given a chance at life with the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. National and local governments learned to cooperate across borders, in particular through the mechanisms of a common parliament and central bank. Equality and mutually beneficial cooperation moved from being Enlightenment philosophical ideals to the status of a working model.

Together, the Council of Europe and the EU demonstrated that universal ideas can be translated into functioning institutions. They proved that perpetual peace is not necessarily in the graveyard. That the equality of citizen and government is not simply a constitutional aspiration. That international solidarity is not the raving of utopians. That the energy of free Europe’s face can bridge the gap between theory and practice.

But the energy of this Europe began to run out.

No matter how solid the EU’s legal and institutional framework, Realpolitik is taking its toll. In the growing geopolitical and geoeconomic competition, Brussels, Strasbourg, and the national capitals of Council of Europe and EU member states were sidetracked from issues of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights.

That diversion made itself felt in the form of reservations, in distraction from the problems inside and outside the EU’s borders, in “deep concerns” instead of a clear enunciation of a solidarity-based stance. Then the economic argument gained more weight, and the political-legal quality was held hostage to it: the energy of ideals was replaced by oil and gas energies. Throughout the 2010s, the moral component of the European project became exhausted and dried up.

The fundamentalism of particularists—of sovereigntists, neo-imperialists, ethnonationalists—has increasingly claimed the place of universal foundations. Such fundamentalism began penetrating European and national institutions, imperceptibly eroding the moral and ideological unity of the continent. In the east, Eurasianism was maturing, Putinism was intensifying, and Orbanism and similar ideologies were taking root. In the west, Brexit took an important member of the EU out of the community of shared destiny. And in the center of Europe, differences in understanding the future of the continental project led to discussions of “different speeds,” that is, different destinies.

Hunger and wars in Asia and Africa forced thousands of people to seek safety in Europe. This migratory wave has uncovered a tremendous lack of solidarity, both within Europe and outside. Universalism, the foundation of the European project, has been radically put in question in this crisis. Since 2014, European countries have been building walls between themselves: the seeds of the Berlin Wall sprouted across Europe a quarter century later. Terrified migrants were greeted with barbed wire, border guards’ batons, and European bureaucracy—and with a law making it a crime to rescue migrants drowning at sea.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine began in 2014. And this disaster has not become a common catastrophe for Europe. Again, the distracted looks and ever-deepening “concerns.” Neither the “Eastern neighborhood” nor the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement led to EU-wide support for the restoration of peace, the deoccupation of southeastern Ukraine, or punishment for the aggressor. The European project was shriveling up, losing its energy and its ability to engage all European peoples in a common peaceful future.

By 2022, Europe’s energy was exhausted. The “Ode to Joy” now sounds quite minor. The EU flag’s circle of stars against a blue background looks more and more like a crown of thorns. Brussels is thought of much more often as the capital of NATO, not of the EU. The first bomb that fell on Kyiv buried the One Big Europe 1.0 project.

Whether or not Europe 2.0 will be built depends on whether Europeans from east and west can unite around Ukraine and launch a new era of peace and cooperation from here, from the banks of the Dnipro. The Russian missiles exploding in Ukrainian cities should wake up a sleepy rest of Europe sapped of vital energy.

Hope is offered by the solidarity shown by Europeans of the east and west—ordinary people and unordinary politicians—who opened their borders to millions of Ukrainian refugees in the first days of the Russo-Ukrainian war. The sanctions against Russia that were voluntarily adopted by European nations show that values can still be more important than prices. The Ramstein allies are helping to militarily strengthen the Ukrainian resistance.

But the question remains: Will Europe unite around Ukraine? Will our disaster be shared, becoming the common European destiny? Will a common front against Putinism become a source of energy for the Europe 2.0 project?

The fountain of exhaustion carries less and less nourishing moisture down into the chthonic depths. But the fountain can also rise upward, sending sprays of vital energy into the sky. The future is open and depends on us, on our common choices and our solidarity efforts.