Toward a European Identity: The importance of a common political space.

L'articolo che pubblico qua sotto è stato scritto originariamente per essere integrato all'interno di un nuovo blog (http://insearchofeurope.wordpress.com/)che si prefigge di investigare le cause e raccogliere spunti per arrivare all'individuazione dei fattori necessari a favorire la costruzione di un'identità Europea. Un punto di vista differente da quello funzionalista, fatto di integrazione economica e apertura dei mercati, fino ad ora utilizzato per indicare il processo di formazione di uno stato europeo. Un punto di vista imprescindibile per poter pensare ad una costruzione in grado di contenere culture e popoli così diversi all'interno di un'unica cornice sopranazionale.

La crisi che stiamo vivendo in questi anni ce lo sta mostrando chiaramente. L'ideologia neoliberista attraverso cui si è cercato di costruire l'Unione Europea sta incontrando inevitabili difficoltà nel superare problemi che non appartengono alla sfera dei mercati e del costituzionalismo. Ci sta mostrando che non bastano integrazione monetaria e abbattimento delle barriere per unire dei popoli che fino a nemmeno un secolo fa si prodigavano in guerre altamente distruttrici o concorrevano a spartirsi il resto del mondo. Per far si che questi popoli possano giungere ad accettare nuove regole comuni, ad agire all'interno dei nuovi spazi e ad interagire in una nuova dimensione socioculturale è fondamentale riuscire a creare legami che trascendano la mera dimensione intergovernativa e vadano a toccare corde fino ad ora lasciate a prerogativa degli stati nazionali, favorendo un processo di avvicinamento dei popoli a quell'obbiettivo ultimo e comune quale è l'Unione Federale Europea.

Il campo di ricerca è certamente molto vasto, così come le proposte già messe in campo. Si va dalla dimensione scolastica/universitaria (con l'aumento dei programmi di studio all'estero e il rafforzamento dei programmi insegnati in lingua straniera), all'incoraggiamento dell'apprendimento di lingue straniere, a quella più prettamente culturale (come quella di favorire la formazione di networks culturali tramite l'apertura di centri culturali sul modello del British Council o il Goethe Institute), fino alla promozione del turismo nei paesi dell'Unione, al fine di favorire lo scambio culturale.

Personalmente, deviato dai miei studi, tendo sempre ad osservare il problema da un punto di vista più politologico, così il focus di questo pezzo si concentra sull'importanza di uno spazio politico come strumento per abbattere le barriere nazionali e dei partiti europei come agenti di integrazione di massa creatori di un'unica identità politica europea, plurale nelle sue diversità ideologiche, ma accomunata da un unico grande spettro ideologico pan europeo.

Buona lettura!

FIRENZE, July 11th 2012 - The problem of an European identity stands at the basis of the European Integration process. It’s a problem which constantly arouse my curiosity and at the same time makes me struggle in the search for a satisfying answer to it.

The question is pretty much the same that our ancestors asked themselves in the making of the nation state back in the ‘600 and the ‘700, the same that even before the Romans and the Macedonians asked themselves facing the difficult maintaining of their huge and “transnational” (using a modern term) empires: “How can we put together and make coexist so many different cultures and traditions under the same central institutions?” and “How can we make those institutions accountable and legitimate to them?”

This is exactly the same question we need to answer nowadays, as European citizens, in order to go “beyond nationality”. This means to find out how to make coexist states that centuries ago integrated themselves smaller and different regional cultures (and in many cases did not succeed so much) and how to make them recognize a central institution, the European Union, as the only legitimate holder of the legal power (using Thomas Hobbes definition of State)

Many argument were brought about and many different points of views can be taken to address the problem. From the strengthening of cultural programs, such as the Erasmus Program, to the promotion of Pan European mass media. In general I think that there is not one answer to this question and neither one point of view to correctly face the problem. There are different components of the European Integration Process that need to be strengthen in order to facilitate the rise of a common European feeling. The point of view I chose to approach the problem is a politologic one, and the argument I retain more important in the building of a European Common Identity is the formation of a fully-fledged political space.

The starting point to address the problem has to be found out within the crisis that the European Union is currently facing. This crisis is not only an Economic one, given by the financial markets or by rising of the sovereign debts, but is also (and above all) a crisis of legitimacy and accountability of the European System as well as a crisis of the Nation state model. It doesn’t take so long from here to say that the question for a European Identity posed by Jesper, Jasmien [nda: gli autori del blog] and many others is crucial to solve this lack of legitimacy and accountability afflicting the European Institutions.

Besides having brought entire states about to fail, this crisis has though showed us how European and how interdependent our nations already are. It has showed that Europe is now a closed sphere. Main decisions can only be decided at the European level, events occurring everywhere in Europe can directly affect other states and a currency without a states flank states without a currency. We have failed to internalize the consequences of this interdependence in the way that we do not support European Issues and that national politics do not take enough into account the Europeanization of the new european issues. There is a lack of legitimacy of the European institutions compared with that of the national institutions, citizens don’t feel like they’re affected by them. In other words: the national identity is still stronger than the European identity.

It is clear that the building of a common political space, is the only way to fill the GAP of legitimacy and accountability that is slowly  taking the EU down to a point of non return.
The risks are low, because the EU has several checks-and-balances. Yet, the potential benefits are high, as more open politics could enable the EU to overcome policy gridlock, rebuild public support and reduce the democratic deficit.
But how to build a common political space in which the European citizens can share the same issues, the same troubles and obviously the same answers in a shared political environment?

First of all there is need for stronger common institutions. Now we only have one accountable institution, the parliament, which is not though endowed with important legislative powers. It does not correspond to the national parliament in which the popular sovereignty is embodied. At the time, the most important issues are discussed intergovenamentally and the so called “history making decisions” are all taken by the nation state’s leaders during leaders’ councils and Intergovernamental conferences.
Obviously the people feel detached from the European institutions and not affected by the European outputs: here comes the legitimacy problem: people think that the decisions made at the European level are less important and affecting in their everyday life than those made in Brussels (when it’s actually the opposite).

But how to make the decisions made in Brussels more important to the citizens? How to bring them closer to the European problems and issues?

The answer is: more contention within the European political space. To make the institutions more accountable and legitimate to the citizens we need to make them feel like their choices actually matters for the future of the Union. We need to make them feel like are not just the leaders who decide for them and we need to make them feel like the European elections are not just “second order elections”. The strengthening of the EU political space would promote political innovation, foster coalition across the institutions, provide incentives to the media to cover developments in Brussels, and enable citizens to identify who governs in the EU and to take sides in policy debates, rising in them the feeling of mattering within the EU process.
It is my deep conviction that this common feeling of mattering in the decision process and this common participation to the political life of the European Union can be the right way to the building of a common identity and to the strengthening of the integration between people in Europe.

In this process the European Parties, as it happened in the building of national democracies, have an important role to play in the integration and democratization of the European political space, connecting the civil society to the institutions, assuring the control of the leaders by the electors, aggregating and simplifying the demand, articulating the political offer through political programs and providing basic services of political socialization and education.
The Europarties at the time are not as developed as the national state’s counterparts. It is so their task to better in their work of building the political space by institutionalizing themselves in the European network and by improving the competition between opposite programs and different positions within the political space.
One concrete proposal, in order to achieve these tasks, could be the election of their own candidate to the European Commission on the basis of a partisan program to carry on in case of victory. Besides, another idea could be the proposal of common candidates for the European Parliament elections (maybe this is a little bit more difficult, but they can start with small shares of the candidates), or the drafting of real common programs to integrate the national ones and so on. All of these proposals would make the European issues closer to the citizens making them feeling more important in the European process.
This changes brought by the parties, of course, will also get the EU citizens even more closer, it’ll happen so that they will have to discuss about common problems and they will be forced to find common opposite (or same)  solutions developing an European Political debate on a continental scale that will increase the feeling of interdependence and unity throughout the whole Union. This of course will also get the citizens closer to the Union and make them feel its decisions like more important and affecting for their everyday life.

Of course this is not something that can be achieved from one day to another. The making of a state took up decades for national states, so will probably take at least the same amount of time for the European one, but it is important to have clear in mind the path to walk in order to build a more integrated system. A path which, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, associated with others improvement in the fields of the mass media, cultural and academic institutions, economy and so on, can only bring Europe straight out of this crisis and, more importantly, straight to a common European Identity.