Abstract
European identity has often been regarded as a potential source of common identification for the peoples of Europe. As such, it has been compared with other supranational identities and deemed to fail. This article proposes a different perception of European identity, as a cultural convergence and individual identification rather than the nineteenth-century conception of national identity. It scrutinises two failed attempts to create supranational identities and explores the potential for a European approximation. The article concludes that student exchange programmes and labour mobility contribute to a broader understanding of the shared elements of European cultures and that multilin-gualism could be an effective surrogate for a common language.
Introduction
Ever since the beginning of the process of European unification, questions of European identity have persistently lingered. With the spread of nationalistic populism sparked by the economic and financial crises, these questions have re-emerged as fully relevant. Could a European cultural and/or political identity develop to reinforce and deepen the integration process? Would it even be possible to have a genuine European identity with so many strong national identities on our continent? Could such an identity develop autochthonously or would it need a gentle political nudge?
Francis Fukuyama (2012) argues that ‘there was never a successful attempt to create a European sense of identity’. He further ascertains that the concept of a European sense of citizenship, defining the obligations, responsibilities, duties and rights that Europeans have, has never been developed beyond the wording of the signed treaties.
But has there ever been a successful attempt to create a supranational or even a para-national identity in somewhat similar socio-historic circumstances? 1 One could argue that there has not, and two examples could be provided to sustain that claim, one rather well known to our audience and the other probably less familiar.
Primarily, the existence of established national identities, aside from linguistic and religious diversity.
The failure of supranational identities: lessons from the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia
The first example is that of the Soviet Union (the USSR) and its effort to construct a unifying, Soviet identity in a large, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multilingual union. The Soviet elites did nearly everything within the realm of possibility to achieve this goal, including mass-scale demographic engineering, the imposition of Communist doctrine as a surrogate for forbidden religion and the introduction of Russian as the official language.
Partly due to their linguistic proximity and somewhat intertwined histories, and partly due to Stalin's heavy crackdown on any potential rise of nationalism, 2 the East Slavic-speaking nations 3 were more inclined to adopt this generic new identity than the nations of the Caucasus and the Baltic Sea. Following the breakdown of the USSR, the unleashing of the supressed national identities of the newly independent nations in some cases resulted in contempt for Russia and the Russians, who were perceived as assimilators rather than as the standard-bearers of the common Soviet identity.
The most notorious being Holodomor in 1932-3, when more than three million Ukrainians and Cossacks were starved to death by Soviet food redistribution policies.
Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians.
The second example of a failed attempt to forge a common identity is that of the former Yugoslavia and its common Yugoslav identity. Though facing far fewer obstacles than the USSR (or for that matter the EU) in linguistic terms, the creators of the Yugoslav identity faced similar challenges when it came to ethnic and religious diversity, as well as cultural background.
Interestingly enough, unlike in the Soviet Union, the efforts to create a Yugoslav identity existed under two different socio-political systems. The first endeavours were made as early as the late 1920s, when ‘Alexander the Unifier’ 4 introduced a dictatorship, abolished the constitution, and renamed the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes ‘Yugoslavia’, with the motto ‘One nation, one king, one country’ and Yugoslavian was introduced as its language.
King Alexandar I Karadjordjevic.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia disintegrated, only to be replaced by the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia. 5 New Socialist elites continued to insist on the common Yugoslav identity and ‘brotherhood and unity’, to bypass the fact that the peoples of Yugoslavia, much like the nations of the EU, were on opposing sides during the war.
Known, since 1963, as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, due to a constitutional change.
The methods used to promote the common identity were indeed more subtle than those used by the Soviets: the official language was a merger of the native languages of two of the largest ethnic groups–-the Serbs and the Croats 6 ; the ethnic migrations were voluntary and mainly for economic reasons, though planned and organised; and a whole set of policies, including those on public works, solidarity funds, military service, higher education and labour, were created to increase interethnic cohesion and boost the number of interethnic marriages, which in turn would yield offspring of actual Yugoslavs.
Called Serbo-Croatian in Serbia and Croato-Serbian in Croatia.
However, the flip side of the identity-building coin involved the negation and exclusion of religious identities, the eradication of national myths and the creation of their more common surrogates, and a tough crackdown on dissidents, not dissimilar to Soviet practices.
With many elements of one's identity being externally imposed and critical parts of self-identification being banned, the repressed tensions stemming from the Second World War erupted with the destructive impact of nationalism: nationalism as the form of identity politics that involves the aggressive and violent declaration of long-negated national identity and the premise of the domination of one nation by another.
European identity versus national identities
Though both of these attempts to create a common identity for ethnically and religiously diverse populations eventually failed, there are some lessons on the relationship between nationalism and identity to be learned from their demises, which could potentially be useful when discussing European identity.
The question of national identity has not been widely discussed in Europe until recently, when questions of immigration and the role of the EU, spurred by the economic downturn, started to become an important political issue and a fertile ground for demagogy and populism. It is probably this intermezzo in the debate on national identity that prompted Jürgen Habermas (2000) to assess that Europeans had moved to a post-national identity.
Anthony Smith, on the other hand, ascertained that for nationalists, nation represents the only legitimate criterion of governance and political community, and that national identification has, over time, become the cultural and political norm (Smith 1992). He points to the fact that well-established cultures with lasting traditions, which could be said of virtually all European nations, have a tendency to be antithetical to the development of an identity which transcends the national framework.
Indeed, seeking to define a European identity that bears all the elements of nationhood as defined by Karl Deutsch (1953)–-homeland, shared myths of origin, standardised culture, labour mobility and common laws–-would be a daunting task. However, Smith argues that if nation was to be regarded as a more voluntaristic and pluralistic conception–-as a rational association of common laws and culture–-individuals would be able to choose to which nation they wanted to belong. The same seems valid for identity, allowing for the coexistence of a national and a European one in parallel. And that is neither surprising nor extraordinary, since most human beings do have a multitude of identities and continuously move between them.
If you think about it, being an Italian-speaking Catholic Swiss person from Lugano in the nineteenth century is not that dissimilar from being a German-speaking Protestant Belgian from Eupen in the late twentieth century or, for that matter, from being a bilingual Spanish-Romanian-speaking Orthodox European from Santiago de Compostela in the twenty-first century. But why hasn't this European identity been fully developed yet, what would it encompass and how could it be nurtured?
United in diversity?
Fukuyama (2012) claims that from the outset the European project has been an elite-driven technocratic exercise. This is the case to the extent that the elites–-on more than one occasion–-have acknowledged the vox populi, expressed in what is widely considered the ultimate manifestation of democracy–-referenda on constitutional affairs–-but then, following some remedial education, have asked them to vote again. As this has coincided with the aggravated economic situation throughout the continent, such behaviour has contributed to the alienation of citizens from the EU and the rise of nationalist anti-European populism.
In addition, EU policymakers have never attempted to transform the promulgated values of the Union–-solidarity, equality and justice–-into a blueprint for an identity construct. Instead, they have proliferated what Habermas (2012, 29) defined as ‘the expectation that the growing mutual trust among European peoples will give rise to a transnational, though attenuated, form of civic solidarity among the citizens of the Union.’
However, in today's Europe, it is rather difficult to expect a sense of solidarity without a sense of common continuity and belief in a common destiny. And no wonder, bearing in mind how much Europeans differ among themselves in ways such as language, law, religion and even political system. Additionally, the lack of a vision of a common destiny can be attributed to the lack of a common historic moment that could be used in such a construction.
Aside from 24 official EU languages, there are a dozen other languages spoken in Europe, divided into 3 main linguistic groups, a couple of smaller ones and several isolated languages, unrelated to any other. Europe is the cradle of two legal systems, too–-civil law and common law–-which have very different traditions. Religious differences, though fairly insignificant compared to linguistic ones, were the cause of major rifts and clashes in Europe from the medieval purges of Protestants to the recent wars in the Balkans. Christianity dominates in both Europe and the EU, with Catholics accounting for 48% of the EU's population, Protestants making up 12%, Orthodox Christians adding another 8% and other Christians constituting 4% of the EU's population. Some 2% of the population of the EU are Muslims, and approximately 23% declare themselves atheist or agnostic.
In such a setting, is it possible or even desirable to try to develop a European identity which would resemble national ones? Jan Werner Müller (2012) elegantly deduces that demanding a grand European story and a form of a European national identity would be ultimately faithful to the logic of nineteenth-century nation-building.
The examples from the USSR and the former Yugoslavia illustrate the futility of attempts to create identities meant to replace or compete against national identities. In addition, the Eastern model of nationalism, which emerged from the struggles for liberation from various empires, has already produced resistance to the notion of a unifying identity.
With all this in mind, European identity should probably be regarded from a somewhat broader perspective and defined in a less rigorous manner. When contrasted with the rest of the world, most Europeans exhibit what could be described as a sense of differential identification. But is it possible to develop a common European experience, some form of a trans-European cultural heritage?
Cultural convergence
Thus far, the main focus of European policymakers has primarily been on the economic and then the political aspects of European integration, with the cultural and psychological issues associated with the process being to a large extent neglected. In the quote often mistakenly attributed to Jean Monnet, 7 one of the fathers of the European project ‘claims’ that if ‘Europe were to be reconstructed, [he] would begin with culture rather than the economy’.
Even the European Commission's Reflection Group ‘Comité des Sages’ uses this ‘quote’ in their report.
Though it would have been overly ambitious and hardly achievable at the time, invoking ‘Monnet’ in this context testifies that contemporary European elites clearly recognised the importance of underpinning economic and political unification with cultural approximation. And it is precisely that process of economic and political integration which has enabled the identification of cultural similarities and the slow beginning of their convergence.
At this stage, cultural convergence is probably the closest form of identification achievable in Europe. There are some shared traditions, elements of culture and history, but they tend to be shared by some peoples of Europe, not all, and by some among them only to a very limited extent.
These fragments of culture and tradition have been shared over millennia and their diversity and multitude give them the potential, when combined, to transcend into an inception for cultural convergence. However, they have mostly been shared through conflicts and competition, while national identities were created to establish or increase the internal cohesion of newly formed nation states, therefore often emphasising the existing differences with neighbours.
However, changes brought about by European integration, technological advancements, education and increased mobility have created an atmosphere in which identification, appreciation and the exchange of cultural similarities could transpire spontaneously and with a neutral or even affirmative preconception.
Exchange programmes for university students and labour mobility have contributed more than anything to cultural convergence in Europe and have even supported the formation of the foundations of a potential future European identity. Over the course of the past 25 years, more than 3 million young Europeans have benefited from the Erasmus programme, with recent rates of some 230,000 students taking part in the programme on a yearly basis. Experiencing other cultures and languages on a grand scale, meeting other young people from different parts of the continent and exerting such a strong cultural influence on their peers at the age when worldviews begin to be cemented in the mind represent an opportunity that no previous generation in Europe has had.
Michael Mann (1992) pointed out that the combination of education and language is decisive in the development of identity, consciousness and awareness, and Dominique Schnapper (1998, 26) argues that ‘the school forms the citizen’. Following the same logic, one could say that the Erasmus programme forms European citizens, fosters cultural convergence and even develops what one could call ‘proto-Europeans’.
Proto-Europeans have a clearly defined national identity, but they are often at least bilingual (by education), born in one country of Europe, educated or employed in another, and frequently have a non-compatriot as a life companion. Their personal identification with homeland dominates, but they habitually have another place in Europe they refer to as home.
Proto-Europeans not only perceive and recognise cultural convergence–-they live it and spread it. The fact that they appear in growing numbers in every European capital and major educational and economic centre of the continent affirms that the existence of a lingua franca is not necessary for convergence, but rather that multilingualism could act as Europe's substitute for a common language.
Further cultural convergence and approximation between the citizens of Europe necessitates that national educational systems need to converge further; the Erasmus + programme needs to continue spearheading the EU's higher education policy; national broadcasting policies should refrain from the linguistic exclusiveness of the official language, allowing content in other European languages to reach audiences in its integral form; and the single labour market should be completed and national labour legislation purged of discriminatory clauses to allow for true mobility. Furthermore, political elites should do more to explain to citizens the importance of decisions made at the EU level in order to build a sense of the common purpose and importance of the European project; the forthcoming European Parliament elections could be the right occasion for this.
Conclusion
Lest we forget, the EU, that ‘unidentified political object’ in the words of Jacques Delors, has existed for merely 20 years with this name and has had its own legal personality for less than half a decade, the Schengen area has only just come of age, it has been less than a quarter of a century since the reunification of Europe with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the Iron Curtain, and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe joined the EU less than a decade ago. Although nearly two centuries have passed since the Concert of Europe was conceptualised and more than 55 years since the European Coal and Steel Community was forged, real European integration is a relatively recent and ongoing process.
In fact, the EU only started to become a more meaningful political community, whose legislative and normative work could attain wider public acceptance and legitimacy as a common legal framework, following the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon. However, this coincided with the outbreak of the financial and economic crises and thus the EU became a perfect scapegoat for the economic downturn. This has had a negative impact not only on trust in the common European project, 8 but also on mutual trust between European peoples. Nevertheless, 62% of Europeans who live in the EU still feel like citizens of the Union, although they are increasingly disenfranchised and pessimistic about the EU's future. 9
According to the latest Eurobarometer survey, trust in the EU has dropped by 26% since its peak in 2007. Over the same period, positive perceptions of the EU also recorded a stable downwards trend of 22%, while its negative image almost doubled, causing the two to almost balance (European Commission 2011, 2012, 2013).
Forty-nine per cent are optimists to 46% pessimists, with citizens of Portugal, Greece and Cyprus leading the pessimistic cohort, while more than two-thirds believe their voice is meaningless in the EU.
At this critical juncture, rebuilding intra-European social cohesion and a sense of a common purpose are of paramount importance, and a delicate approach is needed to avoid the counterproductive effects that artificial top-down methods have had in the past. Slowly developing cultural convergence in this case could be far superior to any attempt at the rapid creation of a European identité communautaire.
To paraphrase the famous quote of the Marquis d'Azeglio–-‘Vitalia è fatta. Restano da fare gli italiani’ 10 –-we are in the process of creating Europe, but we should not aspire to create Europeans, merely to create the right conditions for the emergence of individual interpretations of a European identity.
Literal translation: ‘Italy has been made. Now it remains to make Italians’.
Footnotes