Bulletin n. 2/2007
October 2007
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Magnette Paul
    How can one be European? Reflections on the Pillars of European Civic Identity
    in European law journal , September 2007 - Vol. 13 Issue 5 ,  2007 ,  664–679
    The citizenship of the EU is not only a set of rights, but also of civic behaviours and representations. In this article, I analyse these moral and sociological foundations of EU citizenship, stressing the limits of classic interpretations in terms of ‘identification to’ or ‘support for’ the EU. Instead, I suggest reading the evolution of EU citizenship as a process of political recognition. Such an analytical framework, inspired by recent works of Axel Honneth and Paul Ricoeur, leads one to understand this process as a threefold evolution: critical assessment of one's own national identity; transformation of the perception of other nationalities; and identification to the EU. Such a reading also compels us to pay attention to the limits of these processes: mutual recognition is an unending process which does not exclude the persistence of nationalistic reactions, hegemonic temptation and the revival of xenophobic attitudes vis-à-vis other Member States and third countries. I conclude that any project to render EU identity thicker needs to take care of the risk of jeopardising the fragile acquis.
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