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

A history of European identity, by Wolfgang Schmale

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European Identity in the Twenty-First Century

What does this very short "history of the European identity” "teach” us? I have laid out the trans-national and inter-state historical stages. Examination of the details shows that, throughout the centuries, we have been dealing repeatedly with a phenomenon which can rightly be called "a European demos”. In the historical context, there still exists a European demos today, even if critics consider that some of the conditions for it remain unfulfilled. Thus the – deliberate? – lack of a European public sphere is deplored. Further, a European citizenship is said to be more or less non-binding, since nationally defined citizenship remains authoritative and definitive. In comparison with history, we do not have less of a European demos than in earlier times, since in the meantime – in the 19th and early 20th century – it had almost disappeared. Jacques Delors' call for Europe to be given "a soul” finds here its contact point, for it was aimed at European men and women, at the European demos.

What can the core of the future European identity of the European demos be, after the "Christian Commonwealth” in the early modern period and "culture” with and since the Enlightenment? In the inter-war period, in the Resistance during the Second World War, and in the process of European integration since 1945, the course was always set towards a large European community ultimately based on states. The limits of this goal are repeatedly shown up by the nation states of Europe. In state terms, and as a constitutional category, the EU is difficult to define and just as difficult to identify with. As a consequence, the identity policy of the EU, which has theoretically been pursued since 1973, has turned increasingly towards the assumed commonalities in European history and culture, the so-called cultural inheritance, the call for the creation of a European memory, and the formulation and propagation of common values.

Strictly speaking, Europe's identity is again found in "European culture”, although in comparison to the age of Enlightenment the concept of culture has undergone a shift in meaning. Following Max Weber, culture is today defined semiotically: by culture, everything is meant which symbolically expresses the giving of meaning, the creation of sense and meaning, and the goals of certain human communities. This concept of culture is formulated very openly, it places less importance on overall unity and uniformity, and instead permits variety insofar as coherence can be created. This is what it is about: coherence in diversity. It is less, much less, a matter of being united in diversity, as the motto of the EU rather unsuitably puts it.

Coherence undoubtedly represents a possibility, a form by which identity can be realised. To accept diversity as that which is specifically European, to beget as much coherence as possible, and to seek as much unity as is necessary – it is within this triangle that the European identity of the developing European demos will take form. For the present, it is important to emphasise the practical relevance of this, the realisation of European identity; for both the notion of the Christian commonwealth, ands the notion of Europe as culture (in the sense of the Enlightenment) remained mere imaginings and were able remain so. The EU as a framework and, if necessary, as an expression of European unity, should however been seen in terms of praxeology, i.e. rationally and in terms of logical decision-making. It represents a real practical framework within which diversity and coherence can be realised.

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