Why the attempt to define what we are is so difficult?

Article forms part of an FT Survey 'The future of Europe', which comprises a series of features focusing on challenges facing the European Union in the future and coinciding with the Austrian EU Presidency / European Commission conference, The Sound of Europe, Salzburg, 27-28 January 2006. The Conference was planned to formally kick-start the 'period of reflection' called for by the EU Member States in 2005 following the rejection of the proposed EU Constitution by the electorates in France and the Netherlands.

This article asks what Europeans can find as proof of common identity and symbols of unity and says that the 'sound of Europe should be the music of tolerance and the triumph of democratic diversity'.