EUropean identity På (o)lika villkor?
Europeiskt medborgarskapEuropeisk identitetExkludering-inkluderingKulturellt arvHistoriaPolitical and administrative sciencesStatsvetenskapFörvaltningskunskapLaw and Political Science
Ever since the nation-state has existed identity has been a big deal, it is told that identity is a tool needed to be able to receive consensus from the people concerned on a certain matter. As the European Union is continuously shaped and reshaped due to changing geographical borders, as a consequence of new member-states the aim to integrate the Union equally across its surface has not been an easy task to solve. A lack of trust from the inhabitants in the European Union is a fact, and therefore the main duty of the Union has become to rebuild the trust from beginning to end, creating a Union which easily can be identified with. Since the process of national identity relies upon an excluding-including process and the use of the Other, the identification process on an European level has indeed had fierce effects on the inhabitants within and outside the Union.One of many things that this essay aims at showing is how mythmaking has become a way used by the elite in the Union to integrate a European identity, the myths refer back to a Golden Age when Europe was prosperous and in bloom. Among other tools used to integrate and create a European identity we find such as; unity in diversity, a cultural inheritance based on common denominators such as Christianity and Latin traditions, symbols and a European citizenship. The risk of using the above mentioned tools for creating and integrating a European identity might have an excluding-including effect whereby people are either defined as in or out. At the same time the Union struggles to create a multicultural Union embracing a richness of cultures but somewhere though, the line has to be drawn. For people to be able to identify with the European Union a set of marks which can be associated specifically with EU identity has to be shaped in order to proceed accordingly towards a prosperous future