The Dilemma And The Way Out Of European Collective Identity

European Integration is a process which is driven by elite, from the top of the society to the bottom. At the beginning, European elite had taken the path of functionalism for the Integration process. However, when European Integration touched national key benefits, this functionalism path is not suitable any longer. At this time, that in need is to reconstruct the identity and perception of the European people. Facing with the absence of inner dynamism in the process of deepening European integration, European collective identity attracts growing attention by more and more International relations theorists for the past few years. In order to establish a supranational European collective identity, and make European public heartfelt sense of identity and belonging to the EU, the European Union official has done large job at the institutional level, such as proposed European Union citizenship and so on. These efforts have played a role, and the European public has come to identify with the EU. On the other side, the nation-state in Europe has existed for centuries-long. At present, as the most important form of European public recognition, the identity of the nation-state is still very strong. Compared to the Nation-state identity, supranational European collective identity is quite weak, which is confirmed by the Eurobarometer survey data. My paper taking this as the starting point, explore the difficulties when the identity in Europe transformed from a nation-state level to a supranational level; meanwhile, analyze the difficulties, to explore the way out of it on the basis.This paper mainly consists of the following four parts:In the first part, I analyze the Constructivism, and elaborate the concepts. Identity once was considered as a term of psychoanalysis, while was later introduced to the field of social sciences. Many scholars have given a wealth of definition of identity. If we consider "identity" as an answer to "who am I","collective identity" can be considered as the answer of "who we are". The nation-state identity is a sense of belonging to the nation-state, which is also the most basic form of recognition in the international community currently. European collective identity is a supra-national form of collective identity, and it beyond the existing national identity. Next, I would like to describe the constructivist. The main ideas of constructivism refer to the identity is not inherent of people, but a cognitive process, which is constructed by society. It can be shaped up by people through social acquisition. Besides, Wendt proposed four master variables, which could influence the formation of collective identity. In theory, recognition is not static, the current EU is in a situation, in which the form of identity is changing and restructuring.In the second part, elaborate the current situation of European collective identity, and pointed out the problem. In order to establish the European collective identity, the official EU made many efforts. In several treaties, including the "Copenhagen Declaration", and the "Solomon Declaration", they are all related to European collective identity. From the Eurobarometer data, we can finger out that there are more and more European citizens has recognized their European citizenship. However, the data also shows that the majority of European citizens are favor to identify with their nation-state, and take the nation-state as their first vest. Compared to the nation-state identity, the European collective identity is quite weak, which is unable to break the bottleneck of the nation-state identity. This embarrassing situation faced by the European collective identity has already been a dilemma.In the third part, towards to the dilemma, I would analyze the cause of it. At the beginning, we must clarify the relationship between the nation-state identity and the European collective identity. According to the pluralism, people have multiple identities, and among these identities, there are not very clear boundaries. Therefore, the nation-state identity and the European collective identity can exist together. Strengthen Europe’s collective identity does not necessarily lead to the demise of the nation-state identity. Next, I would explain the predicament of the dilemma, from the nation-state level and the EU level, combined with four master variables of Wendt.In the fourth part, investigate the possible way of the European collective identity. About this, many scholars gave their opinions. Habermas proposed constitutional patriotism, and some scholars believe that a conditional construction is needed. In this part, I collected some main ideas, and investigated the possible way.