Europe is not in an identity crisis.

It is European politics that lags behind the society it represents.
For a generation that studies abroad, works in another Member State and builds relationships across borders, the European Union is not an unfinished project, but a space already experienced. Not by ideological choice, but by everyday experience.
In facts, more than in declarations, Europe is already an integrated community.

Yet, this advanced reality still struggles to find full recognition in public policy and institutional discourse

The most significant gap is not between citizens and the Union, but between a society that experiences Europe as a normal dimension of its existence and a policy that continues to represent it as an exception. For many young people, Europe is no longer a project to be imagined, but an already practised space. International universities, internships in other EU countries, transnational careers and European families have become ordinary trajectories.

In this sense, Europe is already a form of social federation: not declared, not completed, but real. What is missing is not integration, but its full political recognition.

Working with people and their rights on a daily basis, a dynamic that is often underestimated clearly emerges: the most relevant distance is not between citizens and European institutions, but between the maturity of European society and the caution with which it is translated into public policies. Young people who live, study and work in Europe develop a sense of belonging that goes beyond national borders, not because of ideology, but because of custom.

Intra-European mobility is no longer a marginal phenomenon. It has become structural. However, this normality is not yet fully reflected in the instruments that should accompany it. Freedom of movement exists, but it is often not supported by clear and homogeneous access to rights, simple procedures or effective communication.

The result is a paradox: a generation that already lives in an integrated European space, but still has to deal with rules and mechanisms designed for a less mobile and more fragmented Europe.

This gap does not generate rejection of Europe, but frustration with a system that struggles to recognise an already advanced social reality.

In this context, bureaucracy assumes a central role. Not as an obstacle, but as an infrastructure of citizenship. It is through administrative processes that rights become effective or remain abstract. When rules are clear and accessible, Europe works; when they are opaque or overly complex, they risk amplifying already existing inequalities.

A Europe that is up to its social evolution must invest in the quality of its processes: regulatory clarity, accessibility of information, the ability of administrations to accompany people in times of transition.

It is not a question of reducing the rules, but of making them consistent with a citizenship that is already, in fact, European

The central issue today is not whether Europe should become more integrated, but whether politics is ready to take note of an integration that is already taking place.

The European generation does not ask for shortcuts or utopias. It asks for coherence between real life and institutional set-up. It calls for the lived Europe to find a credible translation into the governed Europe.

Many of Europe’s most significant stories are born on the margins: geographical, social and cultural peripheries that, thanks to mobility and access to rights, gradually enter the common space. This transition from the margins to the centre is neither automatic nor guaranteed, but it represents one of the most authentic promises of the Union. Recognising it means strengthening the pact between citizens and institutions.

Europe works best when it stops shouting and starts making lucid decisions

Its strength lies not in opposition, but in the ability to build shared rules and to translate lived integration into recognised integration.

Aligning politics with social reality is not an ideological act, but an exercise in institutional responsibility.

It is from here that a more solid, fairer and more credible Europe can emerge.

Eriseld Zeneli is a European official at the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO)