And they are more skeptical that confident

Europe celebrated this weekend, in the discretion otherwise indifference, the 60 anniversary of the Declaration Robert Schuman. The contrast between the audacity of yesterday and the fear of today could be greater. Europe just may save the Greece of a certain bankruptcy, but still believes in his project and that it represents for its young elites

To judge the morale of the Union through its youth, the campus of the College of Europe in Natolin, near Warsaw, constitutes a privileged barometer. In this place live folded on themselves, in what they describe often as "golden cage", young people more of thirty nationalities which are "animated" a priori by the European ideal. In this College just as in his "big sister" in the Bruges campus, students do not learn only to mechanisms and the functioning of the Union. They become fully what they are already part, prior to their arrival at the College, Europeans.

And yet, even in this privileged place, 'Europe is what it was. " When I started my teaching of international relations in 2002, students of the College were as "worn" by the hopes of the "new Europe" and willingness to overcome trauma Balkan, from the violent breakup of Yugoslavia. Students from the countries of "Old Europe" "reload their batteries" were idealism and confidence in contact with these young Poles, Czechs, Estoniens so full of hope for their political and economic future. Before the show of Serbian, Croatian students, bosniaques days their respective submissions of the wars in the Balkans, European students learned or réapprenaient the rules of the game of what is today still the great success of Europe, the process of reconciliation between "hereditary enemies". In May 2004 I celebrate with my students the enlargement of the Union to ten new members. The blue flag at the 12 yellow stars of Europe which floated across the sky was on that day as evidence, a reward, the promise of a future full of hope. Obvious that, beyond the College, was certainly not shared by all generations, especially in the countries of "old Europe" that performed often without enthusiasm their historic towards "kidnapped Europe duty." In fact, now ironically, Central Europe, behind a "strong" Poland where the nation is block with its State, seems better withstand the crisis as southern Europe, even if the fragilities of the Hungary are obvious.

But in 2010, at the College of Europe in Natolin, the climate has changed. The culture of doubt to the students of the "old Europe" seems to prevail on pragmatism confident students of the "new Europe". This is not the "good wind" come is dominant, but the "ill wind" from the South, if Western Europe required. For many students, their presence at the College is the product of their confidence in the future of Europe, but is the contrary of their doubt in their ability to find work in their respective nations. They build an additional degree - who already tend to be "surdiplômés" in the hope of a reversal of the economic climate or to give a comparative advantage more in a fierce competition for a first job. They gain time.

Questioned about their motives, but on their identities, students of the College is not perceived - in the still significant exception of the Germans - as spontaneously, naturally Europeans. They listen with sympathy, sometimes with emotion, the stories of a generation for whom Europe was worn by the ideal of reconciliation and reconstruction of the post-war period. But this story is not their own, but that of their parents or their grandparents. They ask more what they can do for Europe, but what Europe can do for them in terms of jobs and wages. And they are more skeptical that confident.