National Identity, European Identity And European Integration Process

In the economic globalization tide, Europe is accelerating its step. European integration has been expanding Politics, culture, diplomacy, law and other aspects from economy field originally. In Europe, the boundary between nations seems dispensable and the multinational come-and-go becomes very convenient. Europe is inclining to form a tight community. In its half century development process, although European integration has achieved magnificent success, its course is zigzagging and repeating. In this process, when related with national interests, the integration would be frustrated. Even the existing achievement is not as fixing as we thought because of the national interests. The identity form which based on national interests influenced the integration process deeply, so study on the national and European identity is provided with important theoretic and realistic meanings. This paper will analyze the relationship between national and European identity to open up the influence on the European integration process.The first part of this paper will put up the preparatory analysis on the identity, national identity, regional identity and European identity in order to establish the theoretic foundation for the expounding and outspreading of the paper. Identity is a crucial concept in philosophy, sociology, psychology and other studies. There are individual and group identities. So this part will work out elementary explanation for national identity, regional identity and European identity respectively. The second part of the paper will analyze the connotation of national identity particularly. National identity is always translated into ethnic identity which sources the traditional western national country built up on the already existing territory state but Italy and Germany tracked another developing way which demonstrated for the forming of national states in eastern and middle Europe. This kind of national states is based on the rapidly accumulating and broadly spreading ethnic consciousness. The different developing ways (from national to ethnic and from ethnic to national) demonstrate either states formerly or ethnic groups formerly in the forming process of national states. The difference of forming process results in the diversity of nationalidentity and for which national identity represents different meanings in different countries. In this paper, national identity will be sum up three dimensions: firstly, the identity based on the common consanguinity or clan and ethnic groups, secondly, identity based on the common cultural and historic emotive, thirdly, identity based on the civics rights and obligations under the sovereign government. For different citizens, State may be ethnic County, cultural country and political county. At same time, these three dimensions always fixed together, but may take some dimension as main gist and supplemented by other dimensions which means different states emphasize different dimensions.The third part of this paper will analyze the forming and meaning of European identity. In he process of European integration, a kind of "neo national consciousness" is strengthening gradually which is the "European consciousness" namely European identity. Based on the national and regional identities, European identity is the group identity which is forming under the condition of common value, common religious belief, common cultural thoughts and identity. European identity is new type of group identity which is a form of regional identity. It is a supranational identity which is a transcendence of the parochialism for existing national identity. Internally, the forming of European identity will expand a new kind of belonging shape. Europeans will form an "imagined community" by rights of this identity. Externally, Europe will differ itself from other communities gradually through comparison with others and acquiring its characteristic. In the globalization era, this kind of new group identity will be in favor of the development of regional integration which is a crucial element.The fourth part will reveal how the identity influences European integration through analyzing the relationship between national and European identity. There are mutually nested, cutting, excluded and mutually constructed relations between these two kinds of identities. So this paper will infer the influence for the European integration caused by identity through analyzing the interactive relationship between national and European identities as well as give an expectation for the future of European integration.At last, this paper will give a synthetical conclusion. Though constructed theEuropean identity for a long time, national identity is still stronger than European identity. So when the European Union made a crucial policy, many owning strong national identity states would oppose to the decision. Many favored policies for the integration are aborted for this reason. In this meaning, national identity blocks European integration process. As a kind of ideology, identity has non-ignored influence on European integration. But on the other hands, European identity has developed widely in many states;even reach the equal extent in some countries. National identity is undergoing the "erode" from the top down. A kind of group identity taking Europe as identity object is strengthening gradually. Although also in the disadvantageous position, the interactive relation between national and European identity determines the lasting and zigzagging characteristic of European identity. But comparing with other regions, Europe owns non-analogous advantages than others, so we believe that as the expanding of integration process, the Europeans will mutually identify gradually in the increasing supranational exchanges. Finally a kind of supranational identity will be formed, accordingly it will advance the integration process to a superior level.