The reader of Catherine Guisan’s book needs to take some time to engage with the terminology and the principles of thinking of Hannah Arendt and other contemporary political philosophers. But he gets compensated by an innovative – albeit eclectic – reading of the roots and contents of European political identity and a fine-grained reflection of the principles and motivations for action of actors at different stages of the integration process and their repercussions today. Guisan manages to provide some meat to the bones of the beast…