The idea of Europe – and its consequences The myth of European exceptionalism no longer holds: the continent’s boundaries are arbitrary, its heritage mixed and controversial, and unfit for a unified identity to hold it together. If we give up the commonplaces that have proven insufficient, what can then define and unify this peninsula of peninsulas? True democratic dissent, Ferenc Laczó argues. Since the dawn of modernity some five centuries ago, the citizens of all sorts of European states have tended to perceive their continent as a highly specific and an especially valuable place. Europeans today increasingly – and rightly – view their continent as a rather small corner of the world that may no longer be of central import