Uniting Europe: Common history, european identity and limits of integration

1. Uniting Europe: Common history, european identity and limits of integration Student : Cristina- Daniela Feraru Professor: Ph.DRafalCzachor Polkowice, Poland 2013

2. Introduction The history of a European identity is the history of a concept and a discourse. A European identity is an abstraction and a fiction without essential proportions. Identity as a fiction does not undermine but rather helps to explain the power that the concept exercises. The concept since its introduction on the political agenda in 1973 has been highly ideologically loaded and in that capacity has been contested. There has been a high degree of agreement on the concept as such, but deep disagreement on its more precise content and meaning. The concept of a European identity is an idea expressing contrived notions of unity rather than an identity in the proper sense of the word and even takes on the proportion of an ideology. In this sense the concept is inscribed in a long history of philosophical and political reflection on the concept of Europe.

4. Historical European identity The birth of democracy in the Greek polis in the fifth century BC , the articulaton of the fundamental concepts of Roman law that remain the cornerstone of modern concepts of law to this day, the anguished debates over individual responsibility, conscience and the relationship between church and state that accompanied the whole trajectory of the development of Christendom, and the rebirth of Classical humanism and of the very exercise of politics as a sphere of autonomous decision-making in the Renaissance of the fifteenth century, have all shaped the modern world. It was in Europę that the main movements of modernity took shape.

5. These include the individualism associated with the Protestant Reformation, the questioning spirit of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and then the triumph of the idea of progress in the nineteenth century, accompanied by the emergence of the world's first industrial civilisations and liberał democracies. In the twentieth century, Europe's dominance was challenged by outside powers (above all, the United States), by its own “civil wars', including two world wars, and by alarm at the darker side of its civilisation. The fall of the Eastern European regimes in 1989-91 put an end effectively to the greatest future-oriented ideology of all, communism.

6. In a paradoxical way, Europę is nów living without a future, in the sense of a clearly formulated set of aspirations, but is trying to find a compass to determine its own fate and its place in the world. One of these directions is the emergence of the European Union (EU) not only as an economic project but also as a normative power embodying a set of values, which represents one of the great contemporary schemes to find a way of overcoming the past and devising a new human community.

7. What is Europe ? It is clear that Europe is a very vague notion with uncertain frontiers. The unity of Europe can only be conceived as multiple and complex, bringing together many contradictions , such as law and force , democracy and oppression, spirituality and materialism, reason and myth. European identity has become an obvious gap-filler in public discourses, and it leaves open a myriad of options for interpretation and misinterpretation. This is rooted in the discovery of European identity as ‘missing link’-metaphor for intensified and coherent integration in the early 1970s, when the European Community (EC) was searching for a unified image on the international stage. The EC Conference in Copenhagen (1973) officially introduced the term with its conclusion about the ‘European identity in the world’. In this context, European identity increasingly appeared in official and semi-official documents of the European Community and especially of the European Commission in the 1980s and early 1990s.

8. European integration European identity becomes the key to political integration, as it promises long-sought after solutions to fundamental problems of European integration, including: • the provision of a lasting, cross-generational basis of public support; • the formation of a greater sense of solidarity among Europeans, allowing for redistributive politics; • the fostering of formal and informal participation in the democratic process; • the provision of direction in terms of a political vision for the integration process.

9. Creating a collective European identity is expected to close the notorious , democratic and legitimacy deficit between the European Union and its member societies. It is nothing less than ‘the missing link’ to enduring and successful European integration. The idea of European identity does not refer just to a state-related concept of integration. It carries fewer controversial connotations than ‘European federalism’ or ‘United States of Europe’, allowing less specific approaches towards European integration like multi-level governance. Because it is vague and is kept vague, it is politically safe.

10. The end of the Second World War paved the way for the process of European integration. The first period of an economic driven integration was thus characterised by a strong pragmatism and a “step-by-step” strategy aiming at building up a common economic space. The idea of Europe emerging from the first treaties is deeply influenced by the historical tragedy of the World Wars. Economic areas were privileged for cooperation in accordance to the neo-functional approach. It was nevertheless always the objective to develop the process of integration beyond the European Economic Community.

11. The emergence of the European Union, is a way of re-creating a multi national community on wholly new principles. The European Union is moving away from being simply a trading bloc and is beginning to take on some of attributes of a state in its own right. The question of enlargement to the east, for most of the 1990s, was subordinated to the aim of intensifying integration within the organisation itself, a set of priorities that has been questioned by many. The enlargement of 2004 poses new challenges of governance within the EU itself.

12. All member states of EU have different points of views about European identity, some are more inclusive, some are totally attached to their national identities, some prefer having multiple identities including regional, national and European. Except some of the elites of EU, we cannot see a group of people who wants to define themselves only with their European identity. They are the main social group, who is less concerned with the weakening of national identity. The past of Europe had been full of conflicts and bad memories. Although a long way has been covered since the establishment of the EC, it seems that European identity will not replace national identities in the near future.

13. The cold war After the Second World War the global struggle between the superpowers and between ideologies was focused on Europe. The Cold War meant the primacy of military power, but once again, in a curious imversion, promoted the demilitarisationof European international politics. No war was fought in Europę between 1945 and 1991 and instead energies were concentrated on economic deyelopment,althoughlarge military establishments were maintained. The end of communism was accompanied by the end of the last multinational 'empires'. The USSR ceased to exist as a state on 31 December 1991, leaving fifteen successor republics, including Russia and Ukrainę,Czechoslovakia underwent a separation on l January 1993 when it divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In contrast the disintegration of Yugoslayia between 1990 and 1999 provoked bitter warfare.

15. The geography and settlement pattern of western Europę encouraged territorial fragmentation and the creation of numerous statelets fighting against each other, and this in turn encouraged the creation of the modern administrative state, concentrating fiscal, economic and military resources in its hands. The attempt to maintain multinational empires failed and today the nation-state is the dominant political form in Europę. The disintegration of the USSR, Czechoslovaki; and Yugoslavia can be seen as only the latest stage in the development of national states.

16. While Europe has been divided politically, and new sources of division remain, there can be no doubt that Russia, for example, is part of a broader European civilisation. Its literaturę and art have embellished European culture, its music and philosophy; part of the currency of European thinking, and its people are firmly part of the European tradition. This cultural unity transcends political divisions and geographical barriers. • New patterns of inclusion and exclusion arę emerging, reflecting the ambiguities over Europe's own borders. The question of where Europę, as a geographical and political entity, ends and begins is one of the most important facing the continent today.

17. Conclusion The historical path of the idea of Europe shows that European identity-building is the result of a mixture of elements coming from different contexts, set in a process of cultural appropriation and a continuous reworking of a dialogue of civilisations. The evolution of the European identity issue within the main European Treaties highlights the fact that only in the eighties, when the importance of political legitimisation of EU institutions was clearly perceived; the European Commission started engaging in the cultural sphere. It defined EU founding values and officially embraced the universal human rights paradigm. The relative failure of EU in the attempt to make people identify with the European project is partly due to the state-like “top-down” strategy and the lack of a genuine post-national identity.

19. Bibliogrphy • The Idea of Europe: Identity-building from a Historical Perspective, LÉONCE BEKEMANS • A European Identity To the Historical Limits of a Concept, Bo Stråth, EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE, FLORENCE, ITALY • The Conceptual Spectrum of European Identity: From Missing Link to Unnecessary Evil, HeikoWalkenhorst • European identity: construct, fact and fiction, Dirk Jacobs and Robert Maier • The limits of European integration: the question of European identity, SelcenOner • Introduction: The many dimensions of Europe, Richard Sakwa