The war in Ukraine is having a dramatic impact on the political imagination of Europe. It has reframed the East-West divide by replacing the Cold War narrative of the past decades with one of decolonization and the threat for the sovereignty of the European nation states born out of the disintegration of the 20th century continental empires. The war does not simply change the borders of Europe but also the nature of EU's external borders. It increases the tensions between the imperative for geopolitical EU and the imperative to preserve the constitutional integrity of the Union.