Governing the European Union, by Michele Boselli

8. The extent of a single European identity

The question as to what extent there is now a single European identity is debatable, depending first of all by the definition of (a) “Europe” and (b) “identity”.

Europe and the EU are not the same thing. The latter is an economic, juridical and to a lesser extent political institution currently encompassing 15 member-states, albeit bound to enlarge to comprise a similar figure in the next decade or do. The former is sometimes a geographical, other times a cultural concept that extends well beyond current borders. “The shifting character of European geographical boundaries is illustrated by Turkey and the other twelve countries from Central and Eastern Europe which are currently negotiating access to the EU” (Joseph Llobera).

Identity is a common set of values uniting a group of people or peoples, but it is also open to controversy because of the lack of agreement on which and how many of those values (common history, culture, language, religion) are enough to say that there is a common identity. In Italy, for example, a country unified relatively recently (less than 150 years ago) wide differences persists among its twenty regions on how people perceive their regional, national and ethnic identity,

moreover, the interpretation varies between Eurosceptic partisans on one side, denying that there is a level of common identity to justify further integration, and on the other end enthusiast federalists who believe that identity would be strenghtened by, say, the establishment of a European citizenship.

However, a statistic tool has been developed since the 1970s to measure with scientific method how European citizens feel about a range of issues, including identity. According to the Eurobarometer, a periodical demoscopic survey of about 1,000 people, the sentiment of belonging to an entity called Europe is rather limited. The result of successive editions of the Eurobarometer show that in most European countries only a very small percentage of people, around 5%, declare having an exclusive European identity, while up to half of them do not have any sense at all of European identity (in the middle, people declaring to have a multiple identity, some giving way to the European over the national one, some vice versa). European political identity is weak and there is also a great variation across states.

It would have been naïve to expect the feeling of Europeanness to blossom in a world in which the dominant political entity is the nation state. But, in the light of the acquis communautaire (the community patrimony), the EU has deeply influenced the economic and juridical spheres of the European society, and by gradually creating a common political space has begun to build a sense of European identity. Indeed, confronted by the fact that despite the elections of the European Parliament the public opinion is generally inspired by national politics, this is due perhaps to the limitation of such institution, rather than lack of interest in the institution itself.

“Is Europe a society? The answer is 'not yet' or simply 'not'”. That's how Salvador Ginet and Montserrat Guibernau conclude, conceding however the “undeniable and effective effort being made by contemporary Europeans toward the establishment of a society worthy of our civilization and the best traditions of our history”.

In conclusion, hope resides in education and culture. Culture tends to unite Europeans and education plays a key role in the construction of an identity: a common curriculum in education, shared by all European students, will be fundamental in its development. As for culture, Joseph Llobera brings the example of a cultural phenomenon quintessentially European: the novel. Quoting Czech writer Milan Kundera, he highlights how the novel has accompanied Homo europaeus for the past four centuries; it reflects the passion to know, a feature typical of European civilisation. The novel is the “imaginative realm of tolerance […] a realm many times betrayed but none the less strong enough to unite us”.

Another important factor will be the ever-growing interconnection of the civil society actors in the framework of governance: the labour movement, regional movements and new social movements such as the environmental ones. According to Giner and Guibernau “the development of a European identity will be the outcome of a long process in which bottom-up as well as top-down initiatives are likely to be employed”. This is precisely what our studies are about in exploring the concept of governance and, among others, the theme of unity and diversity.