Magazine / History / Narrating the Nation / Article | 06/05/2008

A history of European identity

The European identity has varied for centuries. Yet at the beginning of the 21st century, it remains unclear whether and which "soul" Europe actually has.

Seen from the inside, Europe possesses no identity. There is not only one Europe, but many: the Europe of the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area, the Western European Union, what remains of the European Free Trade Association, the Council of Europe, and the Europe of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO), two organisations with non-European member states.

Photo: photocase.de

The question of identity can be meaningfully put only with respect to Europe in the form of the EU. It is true that the EU's 27 members do not come up to the current figure of 46 members for the Council of Europe, but nowhere other than in the EU can one find such a high degree of integration, i.e. of institutional and constitutional deepening and indeed intertwining. As a result, for most European states who are not yet members of the EU, the perspective of joining plays a decisive role which will help shape the political, social, economic and cultural development of the coming years.

Against this attractive force of the EU, there is an endless series of internal crises which cause one repeatedly to despair of the goal of European unity. If all countries ratify it, the Treaty of Lisbon will now end the crisis over the European Constitution which the No votes in France and the Netherlands in 2005 had unleashed, but it also contains within it the germ of new crises to come, because individual countries were granted exceptions which constitute juridical grey areas. One could summarise the question ironically by saying that "crisis” evidently constitutes Europe's identity.

Seen from the outside, however, things appear quite different. In connection with the debate about the Iraq war, Robert Kagan published a book which created a storm because the author was so well known.[1] The title of the simultaneously published German translation, "Power and Powerlessness”, blurred the identification in the English title, "Of Paradise and Power”, of Europe with "paradise” and of the USA with "power”, or rather "the power protecting Europe”. The metaphor of paradise was derived from the establishment of peace and prosperity in Europe, and from the abandonment of that ruthless power politics which had been typical until the Second World War. This paradise could come about after 1945 only under the military protection of the USA, which to some extent guarded and continues to guard the gates to this paradise. For many African migrants, who put their lives at risk in unseaworthy boats, this comparison of Europe with paradise - with a standard of life which is like paradise - also has an important place in their minds.

In spite of this, the tendency in Europe to think of EU-Europe as a paradise, and thereby also as possessing an unambiguous identity, is not widespread. The former president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors (1985 – 1995) captured this "deficit” in the image of the "soul” which, he said, Europe had to be given. If one disregards early individual steps and acts like the Document on European Identity, published at the Copenhagen summit in December 1973, the EU[2] since the 1980s has been pursing an identity policy which makes use of the symbols of a unitary state. One could say that the identity policy of the EU is based on the average identity policy of a nation-state: the flag, the anthem, Europe Day, the currency and EU citizenship are all symbolic expressions of unity. That ubiquitous and predominant diversity, which appears as a contributory cause of Europe's frequent crises, is repeatedly "scanned” onto the possibility and feasibility of unity. Indeed, the current concept of identity does assume a high level of unity with oneself, of "being one in oneself”, whether we are talking about the identity of an individual or of a collective.

Historically speaking, there have been times when "European identity” was something taken for granted. Since the fifteenth century, two successive concepts of identity have developed: Europe as a Christian commonwealth (in the early modern period) and Europe as culture (since the Enlightenment). In both cases, the construction and definition of the foreigner and the other played a decisive role. Let is recall these historical positions very briefly.[3]

Photo: photocase.de

Photo: photocase.de

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