Contenu du sommaire : La communauté et l'Union européenne à la recherche d'une identité depuis 1957

A deep continuity is in fact notable from de Gaulle to Pompidou, in matters pertaining to European political cooperation among the Six and later the Nine. Both presidents pursued three major objectives : first the creation of a true European identity in the field of foreign policy. Then to allow the member States to regain control over the existing supranational organizations. And lastly, to develop the international influence of France, thanks to a dynamic balancing of its relations with its partners, and thanks to a clever use of both EEC and EPC levers. This process was to continue, and ultimately lead to the Maastricht Treaty of 1992.

Dialogue avec le Tiers Monde : l'Europe communautaire à la recherche d'une identité postcolonialeEuropean integration and decolonisation ran almost in parallel. What was the impact of decolonisation on the newly-born European Community ? How did decolonisation and the new international status of its member states impact the image of Europe in the world and shape its new identity ? These questions have hardly been addressed by the literature on European integration. This article assumes that collective identities are artefacts constructed by discourse. It offers an analysis of key speeches and texts by European political actors to unveil the image of Europe they created in the 1960s. At that time, the European Community was presented as an international actor conscious of its responsibilities towards developing countries and adamant at extending a helping aid to them. Was this the renewal of a messianic identity, untouched by decolonisation ?

Throughout his work, Raymond Aron denounces a European identity torn between a construction based on economy and a Europe based on myths. He is not convinced by the functionalist method, and he appeals for the constitution of a political Europe, the only one capable of developing a European sentiment. On the other hand, Aron rejects back to back the project of a federal Europe and the Europe imagined by De Gaulle as two Utopian myths where identity can not be revealed. Europe needs to again become the subject of its own history. Building the Europe of defence, promoting its own identity, and not one which is systematically against the two superpowers, and defending the Europe of freedom : it is about nourishing a community of destinies. Only in this way can European identity transform itself from potential to reality.

In 1973, the Heads of State or Government of the Member States of the (then) European Economic Community adopted the Declaration on European Identity. The present paper examines the Declaration in a twofold context. The analysis of the short-term context shows that the notion of identity had already become important at the beginning of the 1970s, and especially after the Paris conference of 1972. The perceived American challenge ( « le défi américain » ) led the governments, through this declaration, to procure for the European Economic Community – among other things – a special, half-independent position in the Western World. In the larger context, the momentum of 1973 can be understood as an intersection of evolutions, namely the development of the common institution as well as the social development from which the concept of collective identity emerged.

Maastricht period often opposed EU policy by declaring it incompatible with « republican » values. Far from being only tactical or occasional, this political discourse refers back to the question of an identity contradiction between national political culture and European political culture. Obvious at the time of the signature of the Rome treaties, theoretical resistance to Europe refers to a republican model drawing its source from a long political and intellectual tradition (the myth of 1789, the republican theory of the state, and the social philosophy of the CNR, public policy model of the 1950s). The increasingly new nature of European « governance » was then able to foster criticism which was both « national » and « democratic », two aspects which strengthened each other.

The question of the participation of citizens, or even, for the federalists, of a new common citizenship, came at the very beginning of the European construction process. With the creation of the European communities came the advent of new economic and legal rights, but from the 1970s onwards, member states reflected on the creation of special rights, particularly the rapprochement between a process which had become too technical, and citizens who were still rather unconcerned with the issue. The project of a Europe of citizens became an essential element of the revival of the 1980s, with the work of the Adonnino Committee, but it was not until the emergence of a project of political union in 1990 that the Twelve came to agree on the birth of a European citizenship. This slow and difficult evolution marked an awareness of the importance of the European people in the European construction process, but did not manage to reinforce a European identity, which remains fragile.

Eurobarometer surveys of tens of thousands of EU citizens regularly investigate people's opinions on the subject of European identity. They show that a feeling of belonging to Europe, inextricably coupled with the notion of values, tends to overlay national identity. Peace, human rights, freedom of movement, the concept of the social market economy and, increasingly, burgeoning environmental concerns, are at the core of this sentiment. This paper considers the extent to which the European Commission's communications policies, among others, encourage the emergence of a European public sphere, and how it contributes in its own way to the construction of a sense of belonging to a common project.