Unlike the more ambivalent transnational concepts of "Americanization" and "Globalization", the increasingly popular term "Europeanization" is generally used to describe unambiguously positive processes of political, socio-economic and cultural integration within the institutional framework of the European Union.¹ Peaceful forms of cross-cultural encounters, shared values, free trade, transnational exchanges of ideas, a culture of compromise, and increasing inter-state cooperation are, or so it seems, at the heart of what we commonly perceive as "Europeanization"; a transnational process that culminated in the EU, a realm of peace and prosperity in which the demons of a nationalist past have become history.²