DAVID ELLIS for TIME
	BROADENING THE REACH: "We should think about how we can reach our own people in our own cities," says Ener, as Christensen looks on

EUROPEAN IDENTITY
Hanan el Khatib prefers not to talk about her family's origins or their immigrant experience or her birthplace. Instead, el Khatib, whose roots are Palestinian, offers a metaphor about painting. "Blends of different colors make beautiful, new and distinct shades," she says. "This is what Europe is about." Her identity? "I am Maltese. And I am European."

The question of European identity was one of the issues addressed in the Bridging Europe survey; it found that 89% of the young people feel both European and national allegiances. Of course, the Bridging Europe group tends toward Europhilia; among the broader youth population, the figure is 55%. Nearly all the survey participants see the two identities as distinct. National identity may involve music or what you eat at holidays or the language a mother uses to sing her son to sleep. European identity doesn't, and it's not about religion either. European Convention head Valéry Giscard d'Estaing may see Turkey's possible accession as "the end of the European Union," but these young people call it the right step for unity. No clash of civilizations here, because this identity, says Aniansson, "is a political and economic one" — a name embossed on your passport and the coins jingling in your pocket. "The E.U.," says Ener, "is a union of values, along with markets, and not much else." The 25 countries now or soon to be in the E.U. came together not because they are culturally alike — they often are not — but because they share some basic democratic, political and economic values and interests.

Over time, European identity may take on more characteristics now associated with national allegiances, especially if a sense of "Europeanness" is nurtured among the young. For now, though, the message from the Bridging Europe leaders is that the Europoliticos can lay off the grand symbolism of flags and anthems. Aps, a dedicated Europhile, bluntly declares, "I don't think European identity particularly matters." "The E.U. cannot force a European identity on its citizens," says Hoefmans. "This is not something that can be created top down. It has to come about the other way."

EUROPE IN THE WORLD
Rasmus Grue Christensen showed up for the first day of his internship at the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 4, 2001, expecting that his four months in the office of California Congressman Tom Lantos would teach him a lot about American government. The affable 24-year-old Dane, a philosophy student and a staffer at the human-rights group Humanity in Action, never thought it would shape his views on how the world works — and ought to work. Then came the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. "Being at the epicenter during the attacks convinced me of the urgent necessity of global cooperation," he says. Only transnational setups like the E.U. can successfully grapple with "the borderless challenges of our modern world."

Christensen's peers agreed, with 84% in the survey saying that the E.U. should play a bigger role in global politics than it does now. Sixty percent want the E.U. to have its own seat on the U.N. Security Council. The youth put human rights high on the foreign-policy agenda — Aps says it should be the E.U.'s "guiding mission" in its work abroad — and 95% rank respect for human rights "very important" as a criterion of E.U. membership.

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