Abstract
What can the European Project learn from Yugoslavia's experience? The second iteration of Yugoslavia repeated the history of the first Yugoslavia as total tragedy, so how can we prevent history repeating itself as a farce? Recent events, such as the reluctant approach to the refugee crisis, have shown that the European Union has the same systemic obstacle as Yugoslavia - the lack of common identity. As Nietzsche warned us, the best way to corrupt our minds is teach us 'to value those who think in the same way more highly than those who think differently'.
To summarize, technocrats from Brussels do not have enough power to manipulate or control identity narrative. Therefore the EU member states are "doomed" to keep stimulating citizens to shape their identities.
This causes ideological vacuum and anarchy of narratives which in case of Yugoslavia opened to nationalist/populist movements. The EU has to realize that nice words and good intentions did not save Yugoslavia therefore the concept of "overlapping consensus" can be taken only as a starting point because such approach tends to leave out the "important things".
What we need is to be brave, lucid, and to recognize, as Tariq Ramadan puts, that 'the other is not frontier of my impossibility but stimulating multiplication of our common possibilities'.