Fostering European Identity

Over recent years, the concept of ‘European identity’ has received increasing scholarly attention. Despite this progress, political initiatives to foster a shared feeling of Europeanness still appear to be designed largely ad hoc. This contribution aims at providing a link between the existing state of knowledge and policy approaches to promote European identity. With a target group perspective, we develop a classification of measures to promote European identity. This classification is based on the distinctions between a ‘civic’ and a ‘cultural’ European identity. Within this framework, we assess seven proposals: transnational party lists for the European Parliament, an EU Citizens’ Assembly, EU consular offices, a Pensioners’ Erasmus, a ‘European Waltz’ program, an EU public service broadcaster, and a European bank holiday. We conclude that current identity strategies suffer from too narrow target groups that already tend to have a European perspective.