The Present and Future of European Identity: An Experiment in Para-Nationalism?
Essay
By Josef Melchior | Cambridge/Vienna
When asked whether citizens of the European Union think of themselves as European, 54% (58% of Austrians) do so often or sometimes while 43% (37% of Austrians) never do. A similar pattern emerges when asked whether citizens feel attached to the European Union. Only about 53% (48% of Austrians) feel very or fairly attached to the European Union in contrast to about 90% of citizens who feel attached to their village and home country (European Commission, November 2007, 84-85; September 2007, 112).
It seems fair to infer from these and related indicators that identification with the European Union is - and most probably will remain - fragile. A solid majority of citizens of the Member States have accepted the European Union as a matter of expediency; they even wish the European Union to play a greater role in the future in a number of policy areas ranging from fighting terrorism and crime to research, protection of the environment, energy, defense, and foreign affairs. Even the idea of having a European Constitution is still endorsed by two thirds of European citizens (including the French, and, less enthusiastically, the Dutch) (European Commission, November 2007, 139, 192). So, why is it that citizens have difficulties developing a sense of belonging to the European Union and to a community with fellow Europeans?
Identity is a "state of mind" as much as it is a "state of heart." Knowing who "I" am and who "we" are is just one element of self-identification; the feeling of belonging to a specific group, nation, or supranational polity like the European Union is something quite different. While European citizens do fairly well concerning the first, they do rather poorly concerning the latter. Part of the explanation is that it is hard to get excited about ordinary European politics. And in case one does - more often than not - negative emotions tend to dominate positive ones. When European issues are discussed in public it most probably is about claiming victory for defending the national interest or blaming "Brussels" for neglecting it. The elections to the European Parliament have become a welcome opportunity for the more extremist parties from the left and the right to bash the national government and/or the European Union. Populist rhetoric works best when based on latent fears: the influx of ever more foreigners, the loss of national identity and sovereignty, the undermining of the welfare state, or increased economic competition and insecurity. This is not to say that all these fears are unfounded or that one cannot do anything about it; on the contrary.
European citizens will only invest emotionally in the European Union when they are convinced that the European Union responds to their needs and fears, that it takes the interests of the citizens seriously, and that it contributes to the solution, not the aggravation, of common problems. From this perspective, the lack of attachment to the European Union of a significant portion of the population indicates a crisis of representation and responsiveness. This crisis - or, more precisely, the divergence between mass and elite opinion on the course of European integration - was lately exemplified by the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty by France and the Netherlands. The Constitutional Treaty was rejected by 55% of French and 61% of Dutch voters although it was widely supported not only by the respective governments who signed it but also by the majority of political parties and mainstream interest groups. The Constitutional Treaty was not rejected because of its innovations but because of what was left unchanged. The Constitutional Treaty became a symbol of past policies that were to be cemented by the Treaty and that a growing number of people had become critical of. These policies were regarded as being either too "neo-liberal,"as the Left argued, or, as the Right argued, ignorant of perceived negative consequences of Eastern enlargement like increased immigration, crime, etc.
But even if the policies of the European Union were fully in line with the interests and preferences of the majority of citizens, identification with the European Union would still remain a matter of the "mind" rather than the "heart." Emotional attachment and a sense of belonging result from practical experiences rather than from theoretical insights. To become a "passionate European" one should have experienced friendship, meaningful communication, and personal encounters with citizens from other Member States (Grundy, S./L. Jamieson, 2007, 677). From the viewpoint of identity-building, the European youth and student exchange programs seem to be a good investment, but they only reach a fraction of each age cohort. Alternative projects that historically are associated with having the ability to forge strong attachments - like warfare or American-style mass immigration (which also would work only for the immigrants and not the European "natives") - seem neither desirable nor attainable in the European context.
Another fact that stands in the way of a more self-asserting European identity is that personal and collective identities are formed by acts of self-identification as much as by acts of others identifying "us" and vice versa. The European Union has still to go a long way to establish itself as a unified international actor. Progress has been made in recent years in this respect, but recognition of the European Union by international organizations and diplomacy does not transform easily into individual identification with the European Union. The European Union still struggles to define its borders, which traditionally has been the precondition of defining who "we" are and who "the other" is. It is one of the more benign and "paranational" aspects of the European Union to be open at least for other "European" countries to join and to defy thinking of "the other" in terms of territorially bounded friends or foes - at least for the time being. As a consequence, the sense of belonging to the European Union does lack the cohesive force that derives from opposing other countries as the "evil other."
In a rather paradoxical move, the development of a European identity seems to depend on the European Union's ability to transcend the nationalistic legacy of its Member States: not to do away with the nation-state - like the federalists and post-nationalists would have it - but to contain it. For the very reason that the members of the European Union want their statehood to remain intact, statehood is denied for the Union as a whole; and for the very reason that the Member States would like the European Union to respect and protect their national identities in a globalized world, the European identity cannot be forged out of any kind of Europeanized nationalism. This might be a reasonable, "paranationalistic" reading of the new motto of the European Union that proclaims "unity in diversity." The jury is still out on whether the described tendencies will prevail over the traditional approaches of European state- and nation-building. A European identity that is shaped along "paranational" lines might be less compelling and less inspiring than national ones, but it would also be less exclusive and more amenable to a permanently changing environment. Such attributes may serve the European Union well on its continued journey into the future.
References |
European Commission (November 2007). Eurobarometer 67.
European Commission (September 2007). Eurobarometer 66.
Grundy, S. /L. Jamieson (2007). "European Identities: From Absent-Minded Citizens to Passionate
Europeans," in: Sociology 41(4), 663-680.
Josef Melchior teaches Political Science at the University of Vienna. He is the 2007/08 Schumpeter Fellow at Harvard University.
