The Political Identity of the European Union: Complement or Overcoming of National Identity?

The European Union finds itself in a paradoxical situation: The Lisbon Treaty is supposed to provide it with new impetus and institutional capacity for becoming a global power, however, confronted with current events in world politics, the bloc seems to be more disunited than ever. Regardless of a 60-year long process of integration, citizens still seem to identify more with their nation-states than with the European Union, all the more so under the auspices of the current economic crisis. For a long time, analysts and politicians thought that a “permissive consensus” among the citizens would allow the elites to push forward the integration process step by step. However, since the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty through the French and Dutch population, this no longer seems to be the case. The paper explores the central themes of the debate around a European identity, discusses the different propositions and concepts put forward by intellectuals and academics, and examines their current relevance. It scrutinizes the relation between national and European identity, pointing out that the nation state and the European Union are ultimately competitors for sovereignty and identity. Thus, a political identity of the European Union can only grow if the member states renounce more of their sovereignty