The essay traces the most salient points of the European integration process in a diachronic key but with a constant critical eye on the current structure of the European Union. The entire reflection revolves around the crucial and no longer avoidable question that directly affects the definition of the best form of government (polity) that the European Union should assume, necessary to determine an effective institutional change in the near future and to safeguard European democracy and the fundamental rights of “European citizens”. Every attempt to define the European system still seems insufficient today, just as the imperial idea appears, to the Author, unsatisfactory in qualifying an order that remains substantially sui generis. The development of its military capacity, the need for an organic and coherent modification of the Treaties alongside a rational reorganization of European policies, the strengthening of the internal market, and the launch of concrete institutional reforms constitute steps that can no longer be postponed if we want to push forward, and even beyond, the process of European integration, to give life to a first sovereign European political formation.