On May 6th, the European Parliament opened the House of European History in Brussels. This museum will dig into the topic of European identity, a concept that predates the European Union itself. A permanent exhibition—in all 24 of the EU’s official languages—shows the timeline of European history beginning with the 19th century, leading visitors through the events of the 20th century and ending with a search for a better, united Europe after the World Wars. [...]
Research suggests that many EU citizens don’t view their national identity and a bigger European one as being mutually exclusive. Instead, those identities may be mixed together in a way that has been described as the “marble cake model.” According to a study by the political scientists Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, around 40 percent of EU citizens imagine themselves holding an exclusively national identity, while around 50 percent identify as belonging to a certain nation as well as being European. A much smaller group, which Adrian Favell calls Eurostars, identifies as exclusively European. Members of this group “wanted to leave behind their national label as citizens of a certain country and to live freely as individuals in a cosmopolitan world within Europe,” Favell says. [...]
Who’s least likely to embrace the idea of a European identity? Stöckel found it was the citizens who felt least represented by the mainstream political parties in their home countries. “Those who only hold a national identity are those who also trust elites much less. This is where the divide plays a role,” Stöckel says. For these citizens, “Europe is a threat to their national identities, to the sovereignty of their countries,” he explained. That tension plays out, for instance, when voters choose candidates based on their stance on immigration.
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