THEME
European Identity in the 21st Century Europe in the 21st century: if you were to ask any person on a street in France whether they rather felt French or European, what would their answer be? And which answer would you obtain if you were to ask the same question in Germany, Italy, Poland, Croatia or the United Kingdom? Would people be more inclined to respond with their own nationality? Or would they answer with: “I feel European”? These questions are questions of identity. There is widespread consensus that the European project and the European Union are a sine qua non if the continent is to remain a competitive player within the globalisation process. However, this does not imply that we, as Europeans, automatically feel positively about Europe. When Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet laid the foundations of the European project in the 1950s, the principal motive behind their actions was to create an economic and political framework that would allow its participants to stay united within Europe. From a historical perspective, Europe has always been very diverse in its culture. The idea was hence to unify the European nations and their values. An idea which may sound simple enough at first, yet it sometimes seems as Europe is too diversified in order to be able to stay together. In 1973, at the Copenhagen Summit, the “Declaration on European Identity” was signed by all Member States of what was at the time the European Economic Community (EEC), with the intent of promoting adherence to a set of common values and principles, as well as a common awareness of the community’s specific interests. Based on this declaration, the task of defining a European identity involved analysing the common heritage of the EEC’s member states, their obligations in the process of the European unification, as well as the dynamic nature of European integration.
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