European Identity : Conditions for a European Political Identity

The present master thesis deals with European identity as an important aspect for the further development of the European Union. Several theories regarding identity in general and political collective identity in particular are applied to the European Union as a citizen based community. Conditions, which are needed for the development of a common identity among citizens of the European Union, are elaborated. Therefore data of the statistical poll “Eurobarometer” are used to asses the European citizen’s feelings, expectations and attitudes regarding the important identity issues. The main result shows that a European identity could not only be based on shared values or attitudes. Especially for a common political identity a real European political community, an effective European political civil society and one common European political public arena has to be established by the European citizens. Thereby a common political project, comparable with the European peace project, is considered as the main starting point for the future development of a shared European “We-feeling”