We live in an age in which economic power seems to have replaced the value of beauty. New global powers – vast, aggressive, determined to impose logics of unlimited growth – are shaping an increasingly uniform world, culturally poorer, uglier. Beauty – the authentic kind, the kind that shapes the spirit of a people – has become collateral damage.

Yet there is a place that concentrates much of what makes humanity what it is: Europe.

A continent that represents barely 8% of the Earth’s surface, yet safeguards over 90% of the planet’s cultural, artistic, and landscape heritage. No other part of the world contains such an impressive density of art cities, millennia-old architecture, extraordinary natural landscapes, culinary traditions, and ways of life rooted in beauty.

From the Mediterranean to the Alps, from alpine lakes to islands where time seems suspended.
From Venice to Seville, from Paris to Thessaloniki.
From the Langhe to Provence, from Dalmatia to Normandy.
From Borromini to Gaudí, from Renzo Piano to Álvaro Siza.
From the most complex wines to the purest gastronomic products.
From cars that are style icons to cities that taught the world the meaning of civic life.

In Europe, beauty is not a luxury: it is a shared good.

It has entered the DNA of its inhabitants as the result of centuries of culture, art, and the pursuit of style. It is not the preserve of elites; it is part of who we are. We are – literally – a living heritage of humanity.

But this comes at a price.

By placing rights, welfare, culture, and equality at the center, we have become an evolved society, but one that is economically less aggressive. Other major countries, less attentive to the protection of rights and the individual, have focused everything on economic growth. They have built development models in which people must produce and consume, not think. Where beauty is a privilege for the few, not a collective value.

The result is plain for all to see: the great world powers – the USA, China, Russia – are dividing up the table of global decision-making, relegating Europe to a marginal, almost decorative role. Even in conflicts burning at our borders, such as in Ukraine, our voice is ignored.

And yet it was we – despite our flaws and our mistakes, including the colonial past – who exported culture everywhere. One need only think of the European concessions in Shanghai, the neoclassical architecture of Latin America, the cities shaped by French, English, Italian, and Spanish culture.

We were the cradle of beauty, thought, and style.

Today, all of this risks fading away.

The Historic Choice Before Us

Europe is not a nation. It is a mosaic of identities, languages, and histories. For this reason, it lacks the political, economic, and military weight of the superpowers. Each state acts on its own, weakening the credibility of our continent in the world.

The consequence?

We risk becoming the most elegant slaves of history, rich in art but poor in power.

Yet there is an alternative.

Once, it seemed impossible to imagine a European nation – the “United States of Europe”– because languages, cultures, and legal systems appeared irreconcilable. But today technology has changed the rules of the game: we can communicate in real time in any language, we can make different jurisdictions converse, we can unite what history has separated.

If Europe were to become a nation, it would become the world’s leading power. A power built not on brute force, but on the strength of beauty, culture, elegance, design, and thought. A model different from the dominant one. A model capable of restoring balance to the world.

Beauty can still save the planet – but only if it has the political strength to do so.

The time for half measures is over.
It is time to choose:
either a united Europe that leads,
or a splendid but irrelevant Europe.