Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

44 John Hutchinson
Nation-states and the European Union
In the light of this do we see the rise of the EU as a fundamental revision of the
traditional Europe of nation-states? Nations, I have argued, cannot be conflated with
states and their elites, but are communities of histories and cultures. The pooling
of sovereignty and the limited regulatory reach of contemporary nation-states over
many spheres is nothing new. The hybridisation of national and European ideals
has been of long standing, and it is achieved on national foundations.
Can the rise of the European Community then be explained as a new strategy
of national elites to maximise their sovereignty in an increasingly globalised world?
Or does the federal vision of its founders represent a fundamental revulsion against
the national principle in the name of wider (European) civilisational loyalties? Is the
hybridisation taking on a new character, in which we see a process of replacement
of national by European identities as the integration process takes off?
Alan Milward (1992) has argued powerfully that the EU has served to rescue the
nation-state, but there is also a strong elite-led federalist agenda that arose from
the revulsion against nationalism in the ruined Europe of 1945. The evidence for
continuity rather than revolution is debatable. The European Union can be seen
as the latest in a series of attempts to unite Europe politically as an instrument of
national ambitions. As we saw, France and Germany in the modern period each
attempted in time of war to establish a European power bloc as a global actor against
imperial competitors. In the post-war period the goal was to forge, in alliance
with the USA, a stable political and economic bloc to combat the overwhelming
threat from the USSR, and the initial instrument, the European Coal and Steel
Community, had its precursor in the German war economy in occupied Europe.
What is distinctive about the current project is the alliance of the former enemies,
France and Germany, and the voluntary agreement of other European nation-states
under their leadership to pool their sovereignty in a supranational institution, moved
by the general revulsion against the national rivalries that had brought Europe to
the point of destruction.
The formation and accession of states to the European Community and the
politics of the European Community can be explained by national motives. In most
cases the desire to form or join arose from a conception of national interest. The
motivations of France (to constrain a temporarily weakened Germany within
a French-dominated Europe) and Germany (to relegitimise itself as nation-state
committed to European democracy) are well known. Joining ‘Europe’ can also be
a strategy of freedom from economic dependence on a powerful neighbour (e.g.
Ireland in relation to Britain). In some cases, joining ‘Europe’ was seen as ensuring
the victory of one’s conception of the nation against internal rivals. Spanish
democrats, like their counterparts in Greece, regarded accession as a validation and
protection of the authentic ‘enlightened’ nation against opponents longing for a
return to military authoritarianism and religious reaction. The story is similar for
Eastern European aspirants. For all member states participation in the European
Community gives them the status as joint decision-makers on the world stage,
particularly compelling for small nation-states, to whom the EU Presidency rotates
periodically, giving them their Warholian ‘fifteen minutes of fame’.