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This introductory chapter explores the definition of European values and Europe's cultural tradition. It also summarises the axial age character of the traditions that shaped Europe and lists some questions that must be addressed in establishing a substantive characterization of Europe' cultural values.

This chapter explores Europe's role in Central Asia. Since 2007, the EU has resolved to become more assertive toward Central Asia, spurred by the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, tensions over energy matters with Russia, China's increasing power, and the influence of some regional organizations like the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Indeed, the EU is now one of the main trading partners of the five Central Asian states. However, several issues continue to shape European policy in Central Asia, and the EU must reconcile sometimes contradictory interests: the promotion of European values, economic strategies, and security objectives linked in large part to the proximity of Afghanistan.

This chapter traces the history of aligning the European Union’s (EU) values with those that animate and legitimate States in Europe. The Court of Justice describes the system as based on the fundamental premise that each Member State shares with all the other Member States, and recognizes that they share with it, a set of common values on which the EU is founded. This premise implies the existence of mutual trust between the Member States and EU law that implements respect for such values. The chapter concludes by arguing that the EU needs to be sustained through its model of constitutional tolerance and as a site of demoi-cracy, and not through a shift to the super-State that would risk the majoritarian excess and disrespect for local preference that taints many aspects of Europe’s past.

This chapter explores a major ambiguity in Russia’s state discourse about national identity since Putin’s return to power: that of being increasingly anti-Western while at the same time insisting on Russia’s European identity. The Kremlin developed an elaborate narrative dissociating the West’s liberal values from ‘Europe’ as a philosophical and historical principle, and presenting Russia as the representative of authentic European values, the embodiment of those ‘real’ values that have been lost in the West. This narrative reinforces the traditional idea of seeing Europe–in the sense of a civilization–as Russia’s main other. With the Kremlin’s morality-turn, Moscow was able to develop close connections with conservative groupings in the West. At the same time, the chapter argues that the Kremlin has to offer a consensus-based vision of Russia’s role and destiny, a set of precepts fluid enough to allow flux and reinterpretations, depending on the circumstances, domestically and internationally.

In December 2017, the EU’s Art 7 TEU, often informally but mistakenly referred to as the EU’s ‘nuclear option’, was activated for the very first time by the European Commission in respect of Poland. A few months later, the same provision was activated by the European Parliament in respect of Hungary. In both instances, the Council was asked to determine, in accordance with Art 7(1) TEU, whether Polish and Hungarian authorities were at risk of breaching the EU’s foundational values. This contribution offers a critical assessment of the practical workings of the Art 7(1) procedure, which, not unlike Art 50 TEU, few thought would ever be activated. The underlying thread of this contribution is Professor Sadurski’s seminal contribution ‘Adding a Bite to a Bark’ in which he offered the first comprehensive account of the genesis and assessment of Art 7 TEU.

This contribution looks at the application of EU case law by the Ukrainian judiciary in the course of implementation of the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement, which triggered unprecedented political, economic, and legal reforms in Ukraine. Several issues form the focus of consideration in the chapter. The first issue is the evolution of EU–Ukraine relations and reform of the Ukrainian legal system and judiciary in the course of the ‘Europeanization’ of Ukraine since its independence in 1991. The second issue is effective implementation and application of the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement within the Ukrainian legal order and its compatibility with the Ukrainian Constitution. The latest political and legal developments in Ukraine are analysed through the prism of effective implementation of the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement and the rise of pro-European reforms of the Ukrainian judiciary since the ‘Maidan Revolution’/‘Revolution of Dignity’ in 2014. In conclusion, it is argued that the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement enhanced the adaptability of the national constitutional order to the European integration project and reinvigorated judicial activism by Ukrainian judges to refer to the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

This chapter explains how the contradictory forces of invisibility and conspicuousness that worked incessantly upon dark-skinned black men and women living in societies dominated by European cultural values shaped Edmond Dede's interactions with the people he encountered. They defined people's expectations of him and provoked him to adopt strategies to evade those forces. He may not have prospered to the extent or in the way that he would have preferred to, but in the end the people who used him as an index of their hopes were right to do so. Conspicuousness was a permanent quality of his life in an overwhelmingly white society. Likewise, because his skin color consistently drew the attention of white, black, and mixed-race observers away from his work, the creative self would be always behind the mask.