The path that the European project took could have been different, and could still be altered. Competing ideas of Europe germinated in a historical landscape cross-fertilised by emerging ideologies, including anarchism and pacifism. Revisiting and updating arguments articulated by these, the European project’s success narratives can be criticised on four counts, consequently helping inform discussions of how to proceed with it in an increasingly unstable twenty-first century. On economics: the uneven impact of integration has bred justifiable resentment on both economic and cultural grounds. On peace: the Cold War was arguably more decisive than European integration; European powers have continued to embark on neoimperial interventions; a booming arms industry has fuelled militarism both in Europe and beyond; and neither structural nor direct political violence have disappeared. On multilevel governance: Westphalian imaginaries have impeded subsidiarity; institutions lack democratic accountability; and the interests of international capital have captured all layers of European governance. On Europe’s international image: ‘normative’ Europe is complicit in dirtier transatlantic work; neo-colonial asymmetries and inequalities have replaced older colonial ones; ‘fortress Europe’ causes migrant suffering; and Europe’s historic sense of superiority has yet to be properly confronted. In short, an anarcho-pacifist lens sharpens existing critiques of the European project, finds it wanting on four of its prominent success stories, and provides a visionary compass to navigate the unfolding renegotiation of the place of Europe in an increasingly volatile world.

The deterioration of democracy in Central Europe in combination with the defunding of area studies and the assaults on academic freedom have reinforced perceptions of Central Europe remaining a ‘second-world’ space of knowledge generation. One area impacted by such perceptions is scholarly publishing. While several ‘first-world’ institutions in Western Europe and North America have been moving away from publication metrics as a key indicator of research output performance, in Central Europe, these remain the dominant form of measurement, albeit with considerable differences within the region. This contribution discusses whether and how the prioritization of metrics might limit the available publication spaces recognized as globally relevant. It does so via a case study of one thematic area of publishing, that of ‘European constitutionalism’. In its typical use, this concept overwhelmingly focuses on the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the EU and EU institutional action at the expense of the Council of Europe and broader constitutional developments of European significance. Here, the difficulties are magnified due to a controversy pertaining to the undermining of editorial freedom of a prime field-specific journal by its commercial publisher, leading to the founding of a new journal which came to own the identity of a leading critical European legal studies platform and an ensuing cleavage in the scholarly community over the acceptability of publishing in the commercially-owned journal, which continues to retain a prominent position in formal journal rankings. The focus of the new journal on Europe limits the possibilities for a more global orientation which may nevertheless bear lessons for European constitutionalism. Similarly, the representation of parts of Europe beyond the ‘old’ part of the EU (countries joining before 2004) was rather low both in the editorial board and among the authors during the first years of the journal’ operation. The contribution illustrates how such developments can disproportionately impact publication spaces for scholars based in Central Europe, who may need to choose between global reputation and local institutional priorities, thus hampering their capacities for impactful knowledge generation. It then discusses the broader implications of the case for journal establishment, their aims and scope, editorial policies, editors’ availabilities, and publication formats. In conclusion, the impications for critical European studies are highlighted, focusing on the uneven representation of perspectives from institutional spaces beyond ‘the West’ as well as limited collaborations between Central European and Global South academia, despite both often facing similar challenges.

European constitutional debates frequently orbit the technicalities of institutional legitimacy, the allocation of competences, or the democratic performance of the European Union (EU). Whether framed through the lens of the "democratic deficit," the principle of subsidiarity, or constitutional pluralism, these mainstream approaches operate on a foundational assumption: the Member State exists as a given, ontologically stable entity. It is presumed to be a sovereign, territorially bounded polity possessing supreme constitutional authority. While this assumption facilitates functional analysis, it obscures a more profound question: how do states ontologically reproduce themselves in a political order that fundamentally undermines the exclusivity and unity of sovereignty?

Critical scholarship challenges the premise that states are pre-given actors with fixed interests. Some theorists however argue that states emerge through performative, institutional, and discursive practices that continuously produce the state as a recognizable entity. Similarly, genealogical accounts demonstrate that sovereignty and territoriality are historically contingent constructs, rather than natural or inevitable features of the political landscape. From this perspective, statehood is not a structural prerequisite but an ontological project—an ongoing accomplishment.

The EU serves as a unique pressure cooker that renders this ontological dimension visible. By generating a supranational constitutional order that claims primacy and direct effect, the EU destabilizes the apparent naturalness of state sovereignty and exposes its contingent foundations. Member States remain states, yet they must operate within an order where sovereignty is shared, constitutional normativity is dispersed, and citizens hold multiple political subject positions. This condition produces what scholarship often terms "ontological insecurity"—a disruption of a state's narrative continuity and its sense of existential coherence.

This paper argues that the doctrine and practice of constitutional identity functions as a key mechanism through which EU Member States reproduce themselves ontologically. Although scholars and courts typically frame constitutional identity as a legal device to protect non-transferable competencies, safeguard national values, or resist EU encroachment, such accounts remain overly doctrinal. This paper posits that constitutional identity performs a deeper function: it articulates the necessary conditions for a state to exist "as that state", stabilizing its normative, institutional, symbolic, territorial, and peoplehood ontologies. The argument proceeds in six steps: developing a conceptual framework for state ontology; reconceiving constitutional identity as a technology of ontological boundary-work; analyzing empirical cases (Germany, Poland, Hungary, France, Spain, Italy, Latvia/Lithuania); examining the EU as an ontological competitor; theorizing the implications for European political order; and concluding with an evaluation of this ontological device.

Mainstream parties’ support for European integration is largely conceptualised by Europeanisation research in a top-down manner as either principled—rooted in stable ideational or programmatic commitments—or structurally ‘locked in’. In contrast, the Euroscepticism literature often pays considerable attention to ‘party agency’, treating opposition to the EU as parties’ strategic choice. This study addresses that asymmetry and offers an alternative lens for critical European studies: mainstream pro‑Europeanism can also be strategic, agency-led, and contingent. The paper therefore advances the concept of ‘reactive pro-Europeanism’—conditional support for European integration that is repeatedly recalibrated in response to domestic political imperatives. This entails treating pro‑Europeanism as a strategic practice that can be intensified, muted, or defused when deemed necessary by party leadership.

Reactive pro-Europeanism sets out to bridge the gap between the structuralist lens of Europeanisation and the agency-oriented insights of Euroscepticism, based on three main foundations: (1) domestic political and electoral incentives—securing votes, outmanoeuvring rivals, winning elections, retaining office—override ideational commitments to the European project; (2) party elites recalibrate the tone, degree and salience of pro-Europeanism, amplifying Europhile signals when electorally useful and freezing them when electorally risky; and (3) pro-European claims may be left aside or even sacrificed when open contestation with Eurosceptic actors is judged too costly. This novel perspective reframes ‘Europe’ not as something unilaterally imposed at the national level, but as a contested resource whose meaning is strategically (re-)produced by key domestic actors such as political parties.

The concept is illustrated through the British Labour Party’s pro-European evolution from its 1983 general election defeat to the 2016 Brexit referendum, drawing on 16 semi‑structured interviews with senior Labour elites and archival research on official party documents. The analysis identifies three stages of Labour’s reactive pro-European practice: abandoning withdrawalism under electoral penalty (1983–1989); rebranding as the ‘party of Europe’ by employing pro-Europeanism as a tool of competitive differentiation against the divided Tories and as an electoral asset (1989–1999); and silencing Europe as part of ‘risk management’ and ‘damage-limitation’ strategies vis-à-vis rising anti-European mobilisation—a pattern that later influenced Corbyn’s reluctant Remain campaign (1999–2016).

By challenging the dominant narrative on established parties’ support for Europe, this paper aims to extend the ‘agency turn’ to Europeanisation, while simultaneously demonstrating how mainstream actors can contribute to the fragility of the pro‑European narrative in member states under conditions of intense EU polarisation.