THE EUROPEAN NATION?
THE EUROPEAN NATION?

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with the issue of European political community and identity: examines the conditions and terms of such an identity and the possibility of creating it. Not in a general manner, but somehow in the form of a more concrete question: can we imagine a European nation, can we hope that a certain – national – type of European political community came into existence? Such a question assumes from start that EU intends to become a nation-state, although such an aspiration is not that clear at all. Nevertheless, there are signs (such as the common European flag, the anthem, and generally other symbols meant to consolidate European identity) which point to the existence of some intention – albeit not always conscious and coherent in practice – to shape the European demos as a national type of community. Another argument for the approach I opted for is the fact that national political identity – regardless of how harmful European nationalism proved to be and of the damages it caused during the last two centuries – turned out a very stable and popular form of community identity, to such extent that today one can hardly find an example of non-national political communities in Europe. The method I selected is a historic analogy whereby I endeavor to see to what extent our historic knowledge acquired about the shaping of the nations and the evolution of the national ideology entitles us to speak of the possibility of shaping a pan-European national community. Briefly, my position is that one has to analyze the process of creating a national political community in certain European states (on a large scale), focusing especially on the beginnings of the process, France and the French Revolution, and one also has to see whether some analogy could be drawn between the evolution or shaping of the national identity and the European identity. In the last segment of my paper I deal with the issue and the possibility of a European political identity, this time in a general manner, taking as a ground the conditions and circumstances under which such an identity could come into existence. The starting point of the whole inquiry is the conviction that any new form of government, any new representative political system (including that of the EU) presupposes “the people” which could serve as basis and could provide legitimacy for that government.

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