The second panel is devoted to the territorial (Imperium Romanum, Carolingian Empire, Napoleonic Europe, European Union) and cultural-normative (standardization of writing, measures and weights, of coinage and trade in goods, of religion, law and administration) efforts to unify European history. These attempts at unification are contrasted with the resistance of the particular/local. The insistence on the particular/local has a long tradition in the cultural, linguistic, and ethnic history of Europe. Global standardizations date back to the phase of European globalization and have also been a focus of EU tasks. The ecological threat of our planet makes it necessary to rethink practices of standardization.

This panel is also devoted to the persistence of inequalities which on the one hand have shaped and continue to shape the deep structures of the European continent itself, but on the other hand originated from it (prosperity-poverty, center-periphery, north-south, east-west). One focus of the discussion will be the asymmetry between the so-called „First“ (the Global North) and „Third“ World (the Global South). The centuries-old history of colonial exploitation is to be recalled as well as its contemporary continuation by means of global supply chains and market mechanisms. Europeans have dominated 90% of the land masses in times of imperialism and left behind 70% of the current borders. The decolonization of the world as well as of the European thinking remains still an open challenge.