Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

4 Democracy without demos
European integration as a process
of the change of institutions and
cultures
Richard Münch
Introduction
The discussion about the cultural aspect of European integration is characterised
by two elements: on the one hand, there is the demand to have the economic project
of the single market’s integration finally followed by a cultural project of the
production of meaning. On the other hand, there is the fear of Europe’s cultural
variety falling completely victim to the integration machinery in Brussels. Obviously,
the attempt is made to square the circle using harmonising formulae such as ‘unity
within variety’, and reassuring principles like ‘subsidiarity’ (Zetterholm 1994;
Kaelble 1997). But what precisely can we understand by these? How can cultural
unity be compatible with cultural variety at all? Isn’t that a contradiction in itself?
Let us, therefore, take a closer look at the process of European integration from
this point of view. We will see that the question as to European unity within the
cultural variety of national traditions is basically not quite correct. A clearly outlined
European cultural unity will not arise, nor will the nations and their cultural
traditions form its elementary parts. The process of European integration gives
rise to a considerably more varied structure consisting of a myriad of levels and
arenas. Here, the nations and their cultural traditions are losing in identityforming
strength and, instead, give way to integration through a growing division
of labour, whose elementary units are not the nations but rather the individuals.
The economic integration and its market logic goes hand in hand with a homologous
transformation of the logic of solidarity, law and politics. The corresponding
changes are stabilising each other. In this way, European integration occurs as a
comprehensive and thoroughgoing process of institutional and cultural change
(Münch 1993).
A single European market without a European
social union?
The shift in the EU Council of Ministers’ decision-making process from unanimity
to a qualified majority in all questions of single-market integration, as stipulated in
the Single European Act of 1986/87 (SEA), along with the turning away from the
goal of a complete harmonisation of legal prescriptions, technical rules and