The discussion about the apparent need for a European identity is generally conducted by people with a strong European focus, that is by people who have already developed a distinct European identity for themselves at least professionally. They tend to treat the necessity of the European project as a given, the main challenge for them being how to involve the European people, with their still predominantly national identities, in the project. By contrast, people with a more national focus tend to simply ignore the whole issue. As a consequence, the various national perspectives on the supranational European identity have been somewhat overlooked until recently.
Void
Entangled Identities, edited by Atsuko Ichijo and Willfried Spohn, aims at filling this void. The various contributions to the book approach the emergence of a shared European identity from the perspective of Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy, Greek, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland respectively. All contributions share a strong emphasis on history. They make clear that democracy isn’t as obvious as people in the West tend to take it. Most people will be aware that the Central European member states have only recently thrown off the communist yoke. But do all those people who shamelessly claim democracy and freedom of speech as ‘European values’ always realise that a country like Spain was a dictatorship as recently as 1975?
Roads
The various contributions also make clear how diverse the roads have been that have led the various member states to the European Union. A country like Great Britain joined the European Union with a firmly established pride in its ‘splendid isolation’, while the national identity of a country like Austria was open to much more fluctuation. After two disastrous wars, the first leading to the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, the second involving Austria in the horrors of Nazi Germany, less than half of the Austrian population were willing to perceive of Austria as a nation in 1964. After the application for the European Union in 1988, however, 53% of the Austrian population was ‘proud’ or ‘very proud’ of its own country, compared to only 21% in for instance Germany.
Common sense
Common sense seems to dictate that people with a strong national identity would have a weak European identity and vice versa. These assumptions are not supported by the facts however. In the case of Spain we learn for instance that ‘the dominant discourses of nationhood that emerged in post-Franco Spain depicted the achievement of "entering Europe" as an emotionally charged symbol of national resurgence.’ Thus, the identification with Europe may actually serve to strengthen and improve the national self-esteem. Does this explain Spain’s enthusiasm for the European constitution? Sadly, the countries who turned it down, France and the Netherlands, are not represented in the book, so the comparison cannot be made.
Parliament
The development of national identity is generally described in the book as being closely entwined with the development of national political institutions like government and parliament. The link between European identity and European political institutions is hardly mentioned however. I don’t think I have stumbled upon the European Parliament even once in the book. It is significant of course that the democratic institutions of the European Union are apparently of no importance for people’s European identity. But it is even more significant in a sense that the authors of Entangled Identities do not seem to care.
Krijn Peter Hesselink, Instituut voor Publiek en Politiek
Atsuko Ichijo and Willfried Spohn (eds.), Entangled Identities; Nations and Europe (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2005)