Is there a European Identity? National Attitudes and Social Identification toward the European Union

This paper shows that the variety of national attitudes toward the EU could account for the continuous difficulties in fostering integration. European citizens have competing normative views and do not agree on the nature, the purpose and the priorities of the EU project. Not only do they differ in their attitudes toward enlargement and the opportunity to foster a political union, but the reasons of their divergence are also distinct. While national belonging does matter at the aggregated micro-level, there are also strong attitudinal differences linked with sociological variables within each country. Yet, in identity terms, processes of social identifications remain closely linked with the national level. TheEU integration is a process of “distanciation” which transfers individuals’ traditional unity of survival from the national to the supranational level. While people keep their affective identifications at the national level, political power is increasingly exercised at the EU level. In turn, it causes a “retarding effect” and could explain a great deal of the social resistances to EU integration.