Political Identity of Europeans

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Thesis Eleven

DOI: 10.1177/07255136030720011332003; 72; 26Thesis Eleven

Furio CeruttiA Political Identity of the Europeans?

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A PO LIT I CAL ID ENT IT Y O F

TH E EURO PEANS?Fur io Cer u t t i

ABSTRA CT T he peaceful and democratic integration of the European coun-tries cannot be completed i f the EU does not become a true, though not-federal,

poli ty. M aking the European institutions fully legitimate and accountable

requires the development of political identity in a shape which is different from

both national and cultural identity and is not merely opposite to diversity and

change. I ts contents can be seen in a specific set of constitutional values and

principles, including a model of social relations, an international standing and

a peculiar and unprecedented system of governance. Identity-formation in the

EU goes through several channels, but has still to generate a European public

sphere, though the source of this di ffi culty does not li e in the lack of a European

people or demos.

KEYWORDS demos European union legitimacy political identity

public sphere

The question of the political identity of the Europeans, i .e. the present( 15 member states) and prospective ( 10 of the candidate countries) citizensof the European Union, is at the same time theoretically relevant, intellectu-ally stimulating and politically momentous. I t confronts us wi th the problem

of what political identity means in political philosophy, of how it interactswith cultural diversity and institutional innovation, of how it affects demo-cratic legitimacy at a time when globalization and the connected revolutionin political communication challenge the very notion of democracy. I ntel-lectually, it is stimulating to watch how the identity issue develops aroundthe still open and uncertain European process, whose outcome ( the UnitedStates of Europe hoped for by federalists?a loose confederation of capi talisteconomies? a new and unprecedented poli ty?) wi ll also depend on how

Thesis Eleven, Number 72, February 2003: 2645SAG E Publications ( London, T housand O aks, CA and New Delhi)Copyright 2003SAG E Publications and Thesis ElevenPty Ltd[0725-5136(200302)72;2645;030133]

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issues of identity and legitimacy will be addressed in the near future. Finallythe question of identity is involved in three current political questions:

1. Will the EU complete in a full political way the development it wentthrough from the Maastricht treaty of 1991 to the introduction of the singlecurrency in everyday life and the inauguration of the European Conventionin 2002?

2. Which way does the EU want to go so as to meet the challengesof the considerable enlargement planned for 2004?

3. Is the EU really willing to counter the threat of localistic orxenophobic opposition to transcultural integration an opposition that takesadvantage of the widespread lack of a democratic and dynamic view ofidentity?

Widespread refers to the fact that this absence and the subsequent con-fusion are to be found not just in neotribal movements, but in philosophiesof history such as H untingtons clash of civi lizations as well. T he post-modernism of the 1980s, with its equation between identity and total domi-nation, also contributed to this confusion: as if identity was not a fundamentalcategory in understanding why societies keep together or fall apart in disarrayand war, and could be reduced to just an ideological tool of intolerantregimes.

To make clear what identity means in poli tical theory and analysis ofthe European process it is indispensable to start wi th a definition ( 1) andthen to raise the question: What k ind of i dentity for what k ind of poli tics?(2) . Political identity does not just consist of structures, but of certaincontents as well ( 3) ; in any case, the very core of the identity problem liesin its relationship with legitimacy, an essential category in political theoryand an open question for the poli tical future of the Union ( 4) . T he chancesfor this future to develop are examined in 5.1

1. DEFINING THE POLITICAL IDENTITY OF THE EUROPEANS

Poli tical identity is, fi rst, the set of social and poli tical values and prin-ciples that we recognize as ours, or in the sharing of which we feel like us,like a political group or entity.2 Recognition, which is as much an act as it isa process, Renans plbi sci te de tous les jou rs, is what makes identity real,something which is indeed self-identifi cation, mirror-identity,3 even if theothers contribute to this process in as much as we also have to deal with ourimage as reflected in their eyes ( it is easier for a G erman or I talian to perceivehim-/herself as European when travelling outside this continent) . T he recog-nition of those elements as peculiarly ours unfolds argumentatively (whenwe read, say, the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and identify our-selves wi th its norms and its inspiration) as well as alogically or symbolically(when we approve of the European banner being hoisted along with our

Ceru tti: A Poli tical Iden tity of the Europeans? 27

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national flag; but also when we look at the Charter or the Euro beyond theirlegal or economic substance, as symbols of European unity and items of acommon history) . I n its elementary structure, there is li ttle difference between

other political identities and the European one, and there is no point indenying a priori the possibility for the latter to develop because of itsabstractness or lack of foundational myths. Symbols ( and narratives) areessential elements of political communication and cohesion; myths are not,even if they have accompanied so much of the history of the last century.O ne does not need to fall back into the short-sighted rationalism of earlymodernity when ask ing for a scientifically refined differentiation of symboland myth. T he trendy search for foundational myths becomes ridiculouswhen the presumptively lack ing glue for the Europeans to feel like a com-

munity is sought in new variations on the ancient myth of the rape of Europe,which T itian along with other Renaissance artists revived in a famouspainting.4 T here are indeed serious diffi culties wi th European identity, butthey will come up in this article at a later, different point.

An important corollary of the definition is that in their generality, valuesand principles do not by themselves shape the identity of the citizens as indi-viduals feeling and acting in their diversity: they need to be interpreted, tobe reread and translated into the specifi c language of citizens, generationsand communi ties. T his is the moment of ( the abili ty to use) judgement (Urteil-

skraft) , in the sense of the K antian notion revived by H annah Arendt. T hosevalues and principles more precisely, their political and legal formulationsin the Charter or perhaps later on in a European Constitution may beuniversalistic and shared by all, well beyond the culture in which everyoneis embedded, but when it comes to interpreting and debating them, attitudesand arguments are sensible to the individual cultures of citizens and national,local, religious and ideological groups.

Unity of poli tical values and principles versus cultural diversity influ-encing their interpretations: these are the two poles of a magnetic field in

which European identity as a postmodern identity (see below on this notion)can develop in a never definitive balance, and this is the structural reason asto why fears of identity mowing down all individuality are misplaced. M oregenerally, cultural and politi cal iden tity ar e two rather dif feren t thin gs, andmuch confusion derives from the failure to respect their conceptual distinc-tion.5 Political identity results from the mental elaboration of political andsocial experience, which in Europe is the experience of 30 years ( or rathercenturies) of war and genocide and later 50 years of well-being throughcooperation. I t is by no means the outcome of the idea of Europe cherishedfor centuries by intellectuals and now becoming effective, as a commonplacepost-H egelian view would have it. Poli tical and cultural identity do notcoincide conceptually; thus the lack of cultural identity among the Europeans( indeed welcome, as I wi ll later argue) cannot be used as an argument againstthe possibility of their political identity; nor do they overlap empirically, as

28 Thesis Eleven (Number 72 2003)



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shown for example by the circumstance that in 1999 52 percent of themsupported the integration process, while only 38 percent believed in aEuropean cultural identity.6 I t is only upon the basis of this distinction that

we can hope to understand the relationships between them. Cultural identityappears then to be the reservoir of philosophical reflections, legal and moraljustifi cations, historical perspectives and li terary formulations to which wecan turn whenever we want to give shape and legitimacy to a politicalprocess and to debate about norms and decisions that may result from thatprocess. For example, the first steps towards European cooperation and laterintegration in the 1950s, motivated by the will to prevent new clashes on thecontinent, took concrete shape in declarations and treaties as well as articles,book s and speeches aimed at justifying or criticizing them, all drawing on

the various moral, religious, legal and historical cultures of the different coun-tries or across them ( as in the case of Christian social doctrine in G ermany,I taly, France and the Benelux countries) . So far, in the 50 and more years ofEuropean integration, unity and diversity have productively counterbalancedeach other, thus implementing a principle of constitutional tolerance, asJoseph Weiler put it (2001) . T his is a good basis, but no guarantee for thefuture, as the balance is now put under stress by the challenge of more unity(which is proposed for constitutional, foreign and economic policy) and morediversity (Eastern enlargement and immigration from developing, particularly

Islamic, countries) .Let us now turn to the second element of the definition: as happensin any polity, the sharing of European values and principles cannot remainin the air, but must take roots in common in stitutions, otherwise the self-identification of the Europeans remains in the best case a social phenom-enon and does not solidify in the realm of the political. For political identityinstitutions are on the one hand a stabilizing device, as they help citizensto reproduce their identity over time and across generations. T hey do so notonly by creating cultural and educational organizations, such as the school

system in the nation-state, which foster identity, but primarily by establish-ing a permanent framework for agenda setting and decision making, the twoleading forces in identity formation, as day by day they let all of us feel thatwe share chances, constraints and responsibi li ties. O n the other hand, insti-tutions are the embodiment of the normative element that is essential topolitical identity, as different from social identity,7 and is usually enshrinedin the first part of recent Constitutions, in which the essential aims of thepoli ty and the fundamental rights of the citizens are formulated. In a post-national polity institutions do not need to resemble those of the nation-statewrit large; the only essential thing is that they communicate in some waywi th the citizens and pre-existing institutions. N ow, we wi ll see that exactlythe deficit of decision-mak ing capacities and of clarity in the normativedimension as well as the lack of communicative attitudes on the side of theinstitutions are the factors that hinder identity formation in the EU .




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2. IDENTITY AND LEGITIMACY

After a first exploration of European political identity in the way of defi-

nitions, two doubts can be raised and do in fact lie at the root of some debateon the future of Europe:

1. H ow can something like identity, which is usually regarded asunitary and compact, fi t the extremely composite European Union, an entitythat is something more than a confederation, but is not on the way tobecoming a federation, and in which governance is based on a continuouslychanging balance of vertical and/or horizontal integration, while geopoliticalborders as well as legal competences are not clearly and defi nitively defined?

2. D o the European citizens really need to develop an identity?What

is the advantage if they develop it, and what is the loss if they do not?

2.1To address the first doubt, we have to look at the postnational and post-

modern nature of European identity, which is likely to result from bothgeneral and specifically European factors. O n a general level, we are wit-nessing a shift in the very constitution of politics in western democracies.T his shift includes several elements, of which the most representative are:

Politics and the state are no longer able to provide full and stableprotection for the citizens from new and global threats such as nuclearweapons or climate change; consequently, they cannot require obedience toand identification wi th the Leviathan as in T homas H obbes time, and havein fact given up the request that every ( male) citizen consent to his li fe beingsacrificed in war.

Not only the globalization of the economy, but also globalized massculture, the global village and the World Wide Web have upset our com-municative universe, transforming it into a multiverse in which borders, states

and nations play a lesser role. In the normative dimension, more and more citizens and com-munities are convinced that procedural norms and methods of conflictresolution and prevention that we can agree upon better satisfy their senseof justice than thick substantive imperatives (after 1989 we live in this de-ideologized version of democracy of societies that accept and integrateconflict and, in contrast to the US, September 11 is not going to make thissituation change in Europe) .

The reflection on democracys unkept promises, as Bobbio (1987)put it, introduces a more sober and critical version of it, in which democraticdeliberation of Rousseauian inspiration enters an admittedly conflictingpartnership with negotiation among interest groups ( e.g. lobbies in theEuropean Parliament and around the Commission, member states upholdingtheir particular interests in the European Council) , whi le the protection of




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general or diffuse interests can be entrusted to special institutions andbureaucracies that are partly ( European Commission) or fully ( EuropeanCentral Bank) insulated from the parliamentary process ( M oravcsik , 2002) .

The result of these changes is that, particularly in Europe, poli tics hasbecome much more limited a business than it used to be in the age ofextremes, as H obsbawm calls the century of ideological struggle around thepresumptively best way to reshape the whole of society. T his type of politicscan only accommodate a much thinner identity than used to exist in thenation-state,8 and the Eurosceptics9 are not too far from the truth when theymaintain that Europe is not a true polity because its identity must remain thin,pale and abstract. T he problem is only that they fail to understand that thisis the main trend in the politics of our time in western countries; to this trendstates and parties are already adapting, even if fau te de mi euxand some-times engaging in a cover-up that results in an inflated exhibition of nationaland party pride. O n the contrary, the EU, which has no remnants of a strongpast identity to defend, would be able to make the best of being establishedin this time of transition to post-modern poli ti cs.10 Besides, this makes itimpossible to think of European identity in the terms indicated by thenowadays fashionable republicanism, an approach that is indeed incapableof grasping what is going on in the space between society and politics, evenwithin the nation state, and tries to come to grips with it by means of obsolete

normative formulas. H owever, that opportunity remains quite unexploitedbecause in Brussels, that is in the EU li te, the present stage of the processis still perceived largely as a passage (as it certainly is still in an unclear di rec-tion) to a fully federal Europe wi th a corresponding robust identity in theAmerican fashion ( which is unli kely ever to emerge and would also cancelthe European specifi city) . I n any case, this transition does not come upwithout a back lash in groups that are disoriented and seek fi rm ground in anew tribal identity, as Walzer ( 1994) puts it, such as Vlaams Blockor LegaNord, or in a highly ideologized opposition to integration of any k ind ( the

most sectarian sections of the no globalization archipelago) .

2.2Among the specific European factors that may influence political

identity in the EU, primary importance belongs to the fact that the EU is thefirst poli ty to be established from scratch on the basis of the separation ofdemosfrom ethnos, whose entanglement characterized the modern statesince the French revolution. Their once glorious unity, the cradle of popularsovereignty and democracy, has been eroded by the weakening of the nation-state under the stress of globalization and the much less glorious evolutionof nationalism until 1945. To the puzzlement of the Bundesver fassungs-gericht,11 the European demos is partly a partnership of demoicoincidingwith ethnoi ( the peoples of the member states) , partly a demos without an



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ethnos in the mak ing (the constituency of the European Parliament or theEuropean Convention, perhaps later the main player of a European Consti-tution) ; or rather a combination of the two.12 This structural novelty mak es

European identity so different from both national and supernational identity;in the first one all local and regional components are melted into the nation,an ( imagined) process which also applies to federations such as the UnitedStates of America,13 where the nation is a central item in the politicalrhetoric. Furthermore, European identity can be called supernational, assome do without much reflection, only if we assume that Europe is going tobecome a federal superstate, also implying the birth of a nation writ large something which look s as unlikely as it is undesirable. I t would be perhapswise to reserve the attribute supernational only to cosmopolitan identity, a

phenomenon that in our time seems to be about to gain more than a purelynotional status, but cannot be examined here.

2.3The assumption that Europe is not going to become a classical feder-

ation should not be taken to mean that the process of integration will necess-arily remain incomplete. The reasonable criticism of the EUs manydeficiencies in leadership and governance, including the followingcomments, cannot be simplified into a call for fi nally establishing the United

States of Europe, a move that would obliterate the unprecedented and vitalcomplexity of European integration, the very reason why after 1945 Europehas in a few decades become a success story inside and outside the conti-nent. I nside, it has been the new political space for peace among nations,integration among citizens and prosperity for all; outside, it has become aprimary and welcome partner in development aid and regional cooperation,also representing a leading example of conflict prevention through thecooperation of actors that respect each others difference.

Now, if the EU is not going to be a federation, what is its true nature?

We do not know yet, even if we can mention some hypotheses. We do notknow for two reasons: fi rst, the nature of this subject is not to have a ( well-determined, stable) nature, but rather to live in a process of permanen t self -defin i tion and adaptation, doing so with more flexibility and visibility thanother institutions such as the nation-state. Second, the terminology of politicalscience as well as of public law is still very much centred around the state( in the Westphalian sense, going back to 1648) and has trouble in fi ndingnew definitions that may be able to accommodate the ontological changesof poli tics in the nuclear and global era. M eanwhi le, the available hypoth-eses can be grouped in two baskets: in the fi rst one, the Union is seen as anovelty in the field of intergovernmental cooperation and integration inrelevant policy fields, yet not as something that is bound to become capable( at least in the foreseeable future) of making legitimate decisions of i ts own



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in the area of high politics.14 Consequently, these scholars do not regardidentity formation as a necessary element of the process, also because, asM oravcsik ( 2002: 11) put it, the decentralised form of limi ted government

that the EU is today may not require greater democratic legitimacy. O therhypotheses look at the EU as an entity that is far beyond the federation versusconfederation alternative and exists as a still changing and productivelyconflicting mix of nation-states and central European institutions,15 while itsdimension as a regional ( continental) structure of integration in a multipolarworld makes it unavoidably a worldwide poli tical actor, as Tel ( 2001) putit; not to speak of the normative and historical reasons for the political andjuridical completion of the European process argued for by Habermas ( 1996,1998, 2001) .

2.4Whatever the overall assessment of the EU s nature, these hypotheses

converge in stressing its unprecedented complexity and variety as the verybasis for its success. I t is thus hard to think that the identity of its citizenscan develop around a simplified set of strong beli efs and shining symbols asin the nation-states finest hour. O n the other hand, there is no good reasonto believe that citizens of the globalized earth, who are already reshufflingtheir cultural and social identities along the lines of a world at the same time

fragmented and borderless, should be in principle unable to do the samewith their political identity; whether they really do so or not remains obvi-ously an empirical question. In the case of Europe, two contrary risks shouldbe addressed, however. O ne lies in a trend, which shows up in the poli ticalEU debates, including those in the Convention, to uncritically yield to ournatural search for unity, clarity and distinction and to translate the reason-able need to streamline European legislation into a quest for a constitution-ally fixed division of competences between the local, national and Europeanlevels of government. T his statal attitude could go too far and k ill the multi-

level and multilogic richness of European governance; multilogic refers tothe prevailing of either intergovernmental or quasi-federal ( as in the acquiscommunautaire) procedures or logics according to different issue areas, aswell as to the variable geometry practice and, now, principle (enhancedcooperation) , which allows for certain steps to be taken by a number ofmember states to form a coalition of will, but again according to issue areas( for example, foreign and security policy is excluded) . O n the opposite side,the praise for European diversity and productive confusion should not makethe need for some degree of unity of will vanish, nor should it be an obstacleto the rational and visible rethinking (while writing a Constitution) of normsand structures, which is essential to whatever polity. With regard to Europeanidentity as a postmodern path to fi nd orientation in a swi ftly changing worldnei ther un i ty nor diversi ty can be worshi pped as feti shes.




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3. THE CONTENTS OF EUROPEAN IDENTITY

O ur second doubt was: is poli tical identity a real necessity for the

European Union?Wi th the aim of clearing the way for a necessarily complexanswer to that simple question, we are now leaving aside for a while thestructural aspects of European identity and taking a long detour into threeconstitutive and substantive fi elds, that is three of the contents that the Euro-peans may recognize as essential to their self-consciousness.

3.1. Values and principlesThey can only result from a flexi ble overlappi ng consensusamong

Europes liberal-democratic systems and their most representative parties anddoctrines; this consensus already underlies the Treaties as well as the Charterof Fundamental Rights, but can be better defined in a constitutional processand must be later reinterpreted and adapted in formal and informal pro-cedures of public deliberation. Where it cannot be presently reached, as inthe bioethical problem of the definition of li fe, i t must be facili tated byprocedural norms on how to handle disagreements concerning ultimatevalues.

Several European traditions16 overlap in regarding solidarity and socialcohesion as core values, thus taking a distance from the ( in the standardview) American attitude of reliance on unchecked individualism, only

compensated for by charity and sense of community.17 This overlappingconsensus has found an important formulation in the Social Charter of1989 and later documents. I t is perhaps worth underlining that these semi-constitutional statements do not by themselves justify conservation ofobsolete and costly structures of the social state, or a lack of attention towardsweak social partners such as the youth and unemployed, or big governmentas an end in itself. I t is a set of moral and political values, not particularpolicies that can become part of European identity.

3.2. Being somebody in the world: values, principles andinternational powerThe relevance of this element has rarely been given its due, as if Europe

was completely defined by the proclamation of democratic principles or thesupport to the European social model. But there is no citizenship withoutpoli ty, and any poli ty whatsoever is also defined by how much power i t hasin the world and how i t deals wi th power. O nly recently the White Paper onEuropean governance has made the point that an improved acceptance ofEuropean values and institutions can result from successful international

action.18 The international component of European identity seems to consistof:

the Unions and the member states abili ty to represent not justa leading example of regional integration and stabilization, but also to




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cooperate with the rest of the world in fair and peace-promoting terms, whichis quite different from Europe puissan ce or Superpower Europeand wouldgive a political and not purely commercial sense to a neoregional and multi-

polar reorganization of the post-Cold War international order.19 It is only inthis sense of a power that does not try to match its economic dimension withmi li tary means that we can speak of the EU as a civi lian power; not in termsof an overall refusal to possess and to use military instruments for limitedaims and operations.

Europes determination in upholding and protecting human rightsparticularly in nearby foreign countries, which means active conflict pre-vention as well as mi li tary intervention whenever needed. I n the downfallof Y ugoslavia it was certainly needed, but it did not happen, not even when

faced with ethnic cleansing and genocide, and Europe only followed suit toAmerican action which came three years too late in 1995. T he embarrass-ment and cynicism of the member states governments and the hypocriticalpacifism of public opinions greatly contributed to Europe showing a lackof moral decency and political credibility.20 O nly limi ted progress was madein the K osovo crisis of 1999, and later there was a major step forward inM acedonia.

Europes abili ty to take note of the failures in handling mass immi-gration: the European principle ( with the French exception) not to induce

immigrants to assimilate, which as a way of respecting diversity may repre-sent a sensible alternative to the American model, has too often turned intoghettoizing immigrant communities; this is a crucial challenge to the projectof Europe as integrated multiculturalism must be more successfully addressedif the Union is not to unwittingly produce a clash of civi lizations in its ownborders.21

3.3. Who governs whom?The third pillar of identity is some sort of shared persuasion that the

way the Europeans, both as EU citizens and citizens of the member states,are governed is acceptable and deserves their trust which is still far fromtrue. At best, the present Convention and the Intergovernmental Conferenceof 20034 (a new treaty-founding session of the heads of state and govern-ment) wi ll fi nd a compromise among national lites, which they wi ll be ableto make understandable (unli ke the Nice Treaty of D ecember 2000) andacceptable to their peoples only if viable ( in terms of institutional efficiency)and decent ( in terms of democratic legitimacy, see below) . Basic trust indemocratic values is not enough to build identity, it is the distribution ofpower among the levels of governance (both vertically: European, national,local, and horizontally: poli tical instances, interest groups, public opinions) ,its efficiency as well as its credibi li ty regarding representation that may makecitizens recognize in it the specific and adequate European way of govern -ing the poli ty. In criticizing its oddi ties and failures we should never forget




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that it is the first polity to arise from a voluntary integration of previouslyenemy countries, which had slaughtered each other up to fi ve years beforeand did not even respond to a common external threat, like the American

colonies in front of British repression; the answer to the Soviet threat wasgiven with the North Atlantic Treaty, not the European Community of Coaland Steel. M ore than ever, institution bui lding in Europe cannot be but a trial-and-error procedure, and identity formation an open learning process.

O f the many topics contained in 3, only the underlying core questionof legitimacy can be addressed in this article. Before turning our attention toit, let us stress that in sketching the three main issues of European identity Ihave chosen formulations that favour one solution over others, and havedone so not without some polemical accent. T his is intended to highlight that

also on this continent the learning process of identity formation is loadedwith adversaryalternatives, which require public debate, managed conflictand far-sighted compromise; this reveals its potential as a political and demo-cratic process, quite far away from the pictures of a U nion dominated bybureaucratic/technocratic logics.

4. AT THE CORE OF THE ISSUE: IDENTITY AND LEGITIMACY

In the general theory of poli tics, identity is a precondi tion, or rather

metacondition, for legitimizing a polity or regime, along with substantivecondi tions or performances in the fields of security/protection, well-beingand minimal legality; affi nity wi th one or more of M ax Webers types oflegitimacy is also necessary, but not suffi cient, as I have argued in Cerutti(1996) . But the way in which the legitimacy of European institutions andpolicies has been examined so far rarely goes beyond exploring and classi-fying its legal or social sources, obviously with exceptions among the authorsmentioned in this article. The patterns in question are legal ( treaties as wellas legislation passed by national parliaments or the European Parliament) ,

technocratic (resulting from the effi ciency of the institutions) and corporate( resulting in the trade-off of goods provided by the system and allegianceexpressed by those who benefit from it) .22 The result look s like a patchwork ,very like the multiplicity of institutional levels and patterns of order thatconstitute European governance; but this is not the true source of the muchtalk ed about issue of the EU democratic deficit which I am now going todiscuss very briefly and in a way that differs from the most common version.Patchwork legitimacy can be a problem, but is not theproblem; this seemsto lie elsewhere, precisely in two critical points. First comes an attempt toredefine the notion of democratic deficit, then the essential link of legitimacyand identity.

There is a common, popular view of democrati c deficitas a discrep-ancy. O n the one hand, those (the lites in the EU institutions and theirnational counterparts in negotiations) who make more and more momentous




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decisions are not suffi ciently legitimated in a direct and visible way by demo-cratic procedures such as elections, parliamentary law mak ing and control,which would make them fully accountable to the citizens this still being in

their view the basic requirements of legitimacy, even if scholars have somereason to raise doubts on whether these are still effective ways to makedecision makers accountable. O n the other hand, the legitimate national insti-tutions legislate on issues23 that are no longer of primary relevance to thecitizens well-being, as they are predefined by European legislation orregulation regardless of whether they originate in the European Council, theCommission or the European Central Bank. Finally, national parliaments arenot really involved in deliberations on European issues, they just approve ordisapprove from time to time of the overall policy pursued by their respec-

tive governments in EU affairs. Brought down to a rule of thumb, democraticdeficit means here that those who make real decisions have not enough legit-imacy, and those who enjoy this legitimacy are no longer in a position tomak e decisions on core issues. I t look s li ke a discrepancy between agencyand justification for actions, which can only be addressed by redefiningagency in a way that looks at the European actors ( an upcoming odd demos,a multiheaded government) as well as rediscussing the rules of justification.

I f we admi t that omission or delay of action is morally and poli ticallyas relevant as ( positive) action i tself, then we must also acknowledge a

second, less visible version of democratic deficit. T his appears to li e in ahidden lack of justifi cation for national or intergovernmental (EuropeanCouncil) institutions whenever they block or delay decisions on issues thatare recognizably European, for example in the field of foreign policy. Thereare two, not necessarily overlapping, tests for recognizing the Europeannature of those issues: the fi rst is the experts judgement that they can beaddressed effectively only in the European dimension; the second is inter-subjective, i.e. existing institutions and agreements such as the CommonForeign and Security Policy create among citizens the expectation that the

Union wi ll really deal with them. What is Europe doing now? or Why isEurope not doing something? are the questions that often come up amongthe public when their attention is hit by an international crisis. In this case,democratic deficit or legitimacy crisis arise from the circumstance thatnational institutions exert (veto) power on the whole of the Union, that isalso on citizens of other member states who did not elect them. All this high-lights that a democratic deficit or, as it would be perhaps more appropriateto say, a legitimacy problem does not lie with the Unions institutions alone,but wi th the member states as well. T his is true also in terms of output legit-imacy24 because omission and delay of action can reduce the Unions levelof performance, thus mak ing it less trustworthy in European public opinions.In short, the question who governs whom ( see above, 3.3) emerges onceagain when we have to redesign actors, powers, responsibilities and loyal-ties; in a word, issues of identity and legitimacy.




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Let us therefore step down to a lower level of this relationship. H erethe question is no longer how much legitimacy can be provided to the EUmoving from one or the other source, but rather: why should there be one

actor ( or, more phi losophically, one subject) seek ing legitimacy? The patch-work legitimacy we have mentioned before can only sustain and help repro-duce the sense of being one among the citizens of Europe: the better thelegal foundation and, what is more, the more effi ciency the Union turns outto possess, the more reasons we have for stick ing to i t. But even efficiencyin the output of public goods alone is necessary but not suffi cient to createmeaning, the scarcest resource in the postmodern and particularly global-ized world. O nly when people come to find staying united at the same timehighly convenient for their well-being and highly relevant to their image of

collective li fe, can a new polity reach the critical point of acceptance. I n otherwords, they would then find that decisions concerning ultimate issues suchas peace or war, openness or closure towards the rest of the world, socialsolidarity or deregulated competition should not be left to national govern-ments or the dynamics of globalization, but rather made within the newpolity, whatever ( federal, semi-federal, multilevel, etc.) method of govern-ment this may have chosen.

T his is what would make true the claim of substan tial legi timacy,based on a shared poli tical identity, of the European Union. Presently (mid-

2002) the process is still far from having this outcome, but European identityis also far from being the ens rati oni sto which Eurosceptics, particularly inBritain, would li ke to reduce it. T he European process has already taken onpolitical character, even if half-heartedly, and European identity is emergingas a controversial but relevant issue in both public debates and institutionalsteps ( Charter, Convention) . I t is now possible to determine which con-ditions would foster or hamper further developments in one or the otherdirection.

5. HOW EUROPEAN IDENTITY MAY DEVELOP

As the link between political identity and institutions outlined in 1suggests, there is a two-faced process of identification: the citizens feel someidentity with each other; they identify wi th the institutions. There is hardly apriusand postin the relationship between these two poles, which ratherreinforce one another.25 I dentity of values and principles ( in the diversity ofinterpretations) can only be perceived and elaborated in the practical processof common decision making in an environment of conflicting proposals.

I f this is the way how poli tical identity goes about forming, i n Europethere seem to be four channels leading to it:

1. banal Europeanism, as Wallace (2001) puts it; that is, the increas-ing leverage of EU directives, regulations and funds in more and more areas




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of business and public life, which confronts more and more people with theimportance of the Union in our everyday life;

2. steps that push the symbolic moments of identifi cation forward, in

recent years primarily the Euro not only as one currency instead of many,but also as common measure of living standards across Europe;

3. the constitutional debate around first the Charter and now the Con-vention, often but wrongly seen as the supreme sphere of identity definition,whereas it is just the space in which processes developing elsewhere find aprovisional legal formulation as well as a channel into Europes publicopinions;

4. decision mak ing in relevant poli tical areas. T his topic is likely to bethe heart of the entire matter and deserves a longer discussion.

A commonplace of Euroscepticism is that decision making on supremematters must remain in the hands of nation-state governments because, say,the French feel they share destiny and responsibility only with other Frenchnationals, not wi th the D utch, the G ermans or the Portuguese. T his may beeither true or a self-fulfi lling prophecy: the individual peoples wi ll never feelEuropean as long as their governments refrain from giving European insti-tutions ( e.g. not a federal executive, but a European Council not subject tounanimous rule) the power to make binding decisions for all and everybody,

wi thout veto holders blocking the agenda and/or delaying necessary acts. Tobuild identity among the people, there is nothing like being actors ( as voters)and addressees for the good or evi l of the same poli tical acts ( laws, decisionsof the executive, rulings of the Courts) . T here is no cultural reform ( not evena sudden and quite unli kely lot of talk about European identity in schoolsand on television) or constitutional debate that can rival actual poli ticsin theformation of poli tical identity. However, if this is not to shrink down to thetautology i f you want more identity to sustain more European politics, mak emore political decisions in Europe, the interaction of identity and politics

must be examined carefully.There are two levels of analysis. O ne deals wi th the dynamics ofEuropean politics, the other with the tat de con sci ence of the Europeans. Letus start with this one: the Eurobarometertells us that, while on certain highlypolitical issues such as foreign policy and defence an impressive consensusfor more European unity exists, overall acceptance of the political Europe26

has only recently and by a few points passed the 50 percent mark . M oreimportant politically is perhaps the increasing lack of appeal that surroundselections to the European Parliament; in spite of the increasing power of thisbody in the Union government, the elections have a low turnout and areflooded with national issues and national party rows. Banal Europeanismand other trends notwithstanding, there still seems to be among people andcivi l societies something of a structural lack of interest in the Europeanagenda (M oravcsik , 2002: 11) . M oravcsik links this lack of interest to the fact




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that most of the issues that the EU deals wi th, such as trade liberalization,monetary policy, environmental regulations and foreign aid, have lowsalience in the citizens souls, while what matters most to them ( health care,

education, law and order, social security and taxation) is not primarily an EUcompetence and still seems to remain in the hands of national governmentsand parties, mak ing national elections and policies much more interesting tothe people.

This is largely true, and partial corrections to this view would now beof little interest. T he essential comment is that those still national compe-tences are indeed heavily constrained by the budgetary and monetary pro-visions deriving from the single currency regime, thus mak ing the nationalspace for politics much smaller than it appears to be. I t is rather in the

European space27 that alternatives are weighed, trade-offs envisaged, essen-tial interests asserted and fi nally absolute ( for the consistency and relevanceof the Union i tself) and relative ( for the individual member states and theirconfl icting social groups) gains and losses are determined. I t would be sim-plistic to conclude: let the citizens become aware of where the real decisionsare made, let them overcome the gap between what really is and what onlyseems to be, and they will develop a corresponding, namely Europeanidentity. Let us say instead that that gap hints at a real problem, a last versionof democrati c deficit: European institutions are not suffi ciently covered by

the publics attention and parliamentarian control even when they actuallymake decisions, instead of blocking or delaying them, as in the secondversion of the deficit ( 4) . I n a dramatic summary, European poli tics is eitherdenied, as in this second version, or made without enough sense of identityand subsequent substantial legitimacy. T his is primari ly the responsibi li ty ofnational executives and parliaments as well as public opinion and not somuch of the European institutions, even if they do almost nothing serious tomake themselves visible and to shed light on their own accountabili ty.28

At this point two developments can be taken into consideration. In the

fi rst one, the existing but hidden EU poli tics ( the Union defines theeconomic guidelines, while the member states tax, spend, pay pensions,drugs and doctors, etc.) becomes more visible and accountable, that is moredebated, opposed or supported by the Europeans, who learn to regard whatis decided in the EU instances as their own di rect concern as much as theydo with what happens in the national capitals. T he main condition for thisdevelopment is the emergence of a truly European publ ic spherewith aneffective channel of communication with EU poli ticians and bureaucrats.This would probably be the sum of the national public opinions, wi thincreasing international interaction among the media involved; to think ofan integrated sphere with relevant transnational media29 and a l in gua francais premature, as some previous experience shows, or altogether wrong whilebased on nation-state patterns.30 T he second development that can be envis-aged brings us back to the dynamics of institutions, the first level of analysis




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mentioned above. In recent debates the critical point look s like this: only ifidentity-relevant issue areas, fi rst of all social policy, are handled di rectly atUnion level, will the Europeans feel like one demosand turn their attention

to the new polity, also because in the EU institutions clear political cleav-ages will then become visible to all and involve everybody.31 T he last onewould be a welcome enhancement of the political dialectic already existingin the Union, even though there would be little point in bringing into theEU the paralysing fragmentation that from time to time affects the poli ticsof certain member states; nor would the mere reproduction of nationalright/left cleavages contribute much to an effective and progressive role ofthe Union in governing globalization. D esigning and implementing a newapproach to the NorthSouth problem, for example, seems to be more

important than uniting Europe in defence of its welfare state, even if it istrue that a Europe on the way to losing its social cohesion32 would be lessadept in contributing to that approach. Anyway, while we leave the socialpolicy question open, the problem seems to be slightly different: are thepoliti cal dynam icsof the European process going so far as to require thatmember states and EU institutions take important steps towards completingthe establishment of a full-fledged, even if unprecedented poli ty?T hese stepswould include Europeanizing in a decisive way issue areas until now left tothe nominal but largely eroded power of nation-states ( foreign policy,

mi li tary capabili ty for peacekeeping and peace-enforcing, border control)and politicizing other areas that have been up to now reserved to trade-offsbetween both national and European lobbies and bureaucracies ( theCommon Agricultural Policy, which swallows half of the Union budget,being the main example33) .

M y guess is mixed: on the one hand, the establishment of new centre-right governments in several EU countries, wi th little vision or capacity ofleadership in European affairs, makes the poli tical cycle unfavourable in theshort term to push things forward, as does the predominance of power

politics (not Europes speciality) in the version of anti-terror policy supportedby the Bush administration. O n the other hand, as was mentioned in theintroduction, the existential challenges raised by enlargement, the quasi-constitutional process initiated by Charter and Convention and also the needto find a more defined and effective European profi le in dealing with thesouthern, Islamic rim of the M editerranean as well as wi th Russia (whichmeans being more than the European branch of NATO ) are likely to makea status quo policy di ffi cult to sustain, in any case in the medium to longterm. Sooner or later, the European process wi ll take on a full poli tical char-acter and further challenge political theory to confront this process withfundamental questions such as identity and legitimacy, while at the same timerethink ing them in the light of the novelties ( this time benevolent to Europeand the world) that the O ld Continent, pronounced dead in 1945, surpris-ingly is bringing into being.




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Furio Cerutti is Professor of Poli tical Philosophy at the Department of Phi los-ophy, U niversity of Florence, and V isiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies,

H arvard University. H e has recently co-edited Id en ti ti es and Conflicts: The Medi ter-

ranean (wi th Rodolfo Ragionieri; Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2001) and two volumes onthe political and cultural identity of the Europeans, A Soul for Europe (with Enno

Rudolph, Peeters, Leuven, 2001) . H e is currently work ing on philosophi cal aspects of

global challenges. [email: cerutti@ unifi .i t]

Notes1. I am indebted to L. Couloubaritsis, S. Lucarelli, P. M agnette, M . Tel and

J. Vignon for critical remarks on the first draft of this article.

2. Poli tical identity is a subspecies of group identity, not a collective identity, as

this notion hypostatizes what is the result of interaction among the individuals

constituting the group into a Volksseele, pretending to be superior to and inde-pendent from them.

3. See Cerutti ( 1996) and ( 2001c) .

4. I t is now owned by the Boston museum built by the great lover of European

fine arts, Isabella Stewart: the myth of Europe has reached out beyond the

Atlantic.

5. Think for example of the request made by the Pope and others that the

European Constitution mentions the Christian tradition ( clearly a fundamental

cultural factor, by no means an encompassing political principle) as a major

source of identity.

6. Cf. Risse (2002: 79) .7. Cf. Cerutti ( 1996) .

8. O n the difference of national and European identity see Cerutti ( 2001c) .

9. Cf. H olmes (2002) and T iersky (2001) .

10. I am spelli ng it hyphenated in order to signal my distance from current post-

modernism.

11. In 1993 the G erman Federal Court rejected objections to the M aastricht Treaty

on the European U nion, but stated that the EU has no sovereignty of i ts own

because it cannot claim to be based on the existence of a European people

(Staatsvolk) ( cf. H abermas 1996) .

12. Cf. Weiler (1999: 3448) .13. Not before the Civi l War, in whose aftermath the US fi rst became a singular.

14. See Moravcsik (2002) . Wallace (2001) regards the EU as based on intensive

transnationalism.

15. Cf. Schmitter (2000) , who i s concerned wi th ways of democratizing what he

still calls a consorzioand/or condominio, and Weiler (1999) .

16. Cf. Tel and M agnette (2001) ; see also Perception s of the European Uni on

( 2001) .

17. Regrettably I cannot discuss in this article the difference between Europe and

United States of America within western culture, or the problem of European

anti-Americanism, the poorest solution to the problem of European identity.18. See Commi ssion of the European Communities (2001) .

19. Cf. Tel (2001) .

20. For the poli tical and ethical relevance of Europe becomi ng a responsible actor

in international relations, see Cerutti ( 2001a) .



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21. I have explained why identity should not be conceived of in H untingtons frame

of reference in Cerutti ( 2001b) .

22. I draw upon Lord and M agnette (2002) .

23. To be specified later on.24. I am borrowing this notion from Scharpf (1999) ; i t is the legitimacy derivi ng to

the government from promoting the common welfare of its constituency, i.e.

acting pour le peuple.

25. I owe this clarifi cation to a remark made by Richard Bellamy on a previous

article of mine.

26. In Spring 2002 53 percent of European citizens expressed the view that their

countrys membership of the EU is a good thing, whi le 67 percent declared

themselves in favour of the euro, see Eurobarometer57, 12. In another study

(Europinion9, T able 8) 60 percent of respondents feel very or quite attached

to Europe, against 84 percent to their town or region and 90 percent to theircountry. A s to the citizens view in the candidate countries, see Candidate

Countri es Eur obarometer ( 2001.1) and Perception s of the European Union

( 2001) . Needless to stress that poli tical identity is a complex theoretical notion,

irreducible to statistics and surveys, illuminating that they may be.

27. This includes the Commission regulating competition and industrial or agri-

cultural standards, the European Court of Justice work ing as supreme instance

of adjudication and the Council deliberating on issues such as the case in point,

i.e. a less narrow interpretation of the stability standards that gives relief to

national public spending (see the Seville summit of June 2002) .

28. In the year 2000 nobody took the initiative to celebrate in schools and on themedia Europe-wide the 50th anniversary of the Schumann D eclaration, the act

giving birth to the European process. Nobody ever made the proposal to change

the name of the European Council i n a way that makes it impossible for

common citizens to mix it up with the Council of Europe, the pre-existing inter-

governmental organization for cultural cooperation that already includes 40

countries, among them several successors of the Soviet Union. The lack of

information on and the scarce visibili ty of the EU is sharply highlighted in

Perception s of the European Uni on( 2001) .

29. So far only the satellite-based, multilingual TV network Euronewsexists, with

very limited audience.30. For more ongoing research on chances and condi tions for an European public

sphere to develop, see Eder (2002) and K oopmans and Statham ( 2002) .

31. In a study focused on the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 ideological cleavages and

party preferences have been found to be more explicative of policy preferences

(except in foreign and defence issues) than divisions among nations (see

Aspinwall, 2002) .

32. This value is highly appreciated by EU citizens, cf. Perceptions of the European

Union( 2001) .

33. I t will be telling to watch the outcome of the CAP reform proposals advanced

by Commissioner Fischer in July 2002.



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