This book examines the role of collective memory in the origins and development of the European Union. It traces Europe's political, economic and financial crisis to the loss of these memories of the rupture of 1945. In order to survive the EU will have to prove that it can act effectively in the face of future challenges. The establishment of the European Union was the most significant development in twentieth-century political organisation. Despite the EU's achievements, events at the beginning of the twenty-first century pose an existential threat. Memory and the future of Europe treats integration as a response to the rupture created by the age of total war. As the generations with personal memories of the two world wars have passed away, economic gain has increasingly become the EU's sole raison d'être. If the Union is to survive, it will have to create a new historical imaginary that builds on the experiences of those who have grown up in a unified Europe and on the EU's ability to protect its citizens from the forces of globalisation.