Since the difficulties of ratifying the Maastricht Treaty legitimacy has topped the EU agenda. Departing from the predominant trend in the literature — that the EU's legitimacy problems are largely due to its inability to develop a common identity which can compete or even replace national identities — this article shifts the focus to compatibility. The core legitimacy test is whether the EU and its member states — as a multidimensional governance system in which nation-states exist alongside supranational institutions — can develop identities which are compatible. Based on this approach, I analyse the ratification debate on the Treaty of Amsterdam in one member state, namely Denmark. The core conclusion is that it is important to abandon the traditional conceptualization of EU legitimacy. As the Danish case shows, legitimacy can be enhanced if member states are able to (re)construe the EU as being compatible with national identity.
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