European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

BODERLINE EUROPEANS: NATIONALISMS AND FUNDAMENTALISMS 137must share, is that referring to the common political culture (human rights),the principles of which must be expressed in the European constitution,and to which we all owe fundamental loyalty (Constitution patriotism).This common political culture guarantees the equal coexistence ofdifferent ways of life linked to the diverse subcultures existing in Europe,as long as they respect the common political culture and knowing thattheir subsistence depends solely on the citizens´ free support or rejection.Amongst these subcultures, we should include present-day nationalcultures, including immigrants´, which should relinquish their public plans(especially territoriality and sovereignty) and become private groupcultures.Leaving aside the rather relevant fact that this transformation ofwhat is national seems quite unfeasible in the short and medium termfuture, the proposal of a post-national identity looks initially attractive,because it is guided by the great values of equality and freedom, whichought to be central to European identity. However, as such, it is aformal identity defined by its acceptance of justice´s procedures. If wespeak about a European identity, we will have to introduce materialelements which fill the adjective with content, and that way we willdistance ourselves from pure post-nationalism. This is something thatHabermas recognizes when he says that constitutional patriotism isinevitably presented to us in an ethically (ethnically) modelled way —inthis case, modelled by the best of European tradition. However, themoment we give this modelling the slightest importance, the momentthat conditions policies such as immigration’s, we will have to speak moreabout weak nationalisms than about post-nationalism. Furthermore, itseems unfeasible to create a political organization that does not involveexplicit support to the cultural dimensions which we nowadaysassociate with national culture: the public European administration willhave to use specific languages; in state schools one will learn certainhistorical episodes built in a specific way using a specific language, etc.All of these are issues which have to do with specific national cultures.If this were like this, it would be a question of generating a weak andopen, yet European, plurinationality; this is, defined by traits belongingto the various European nations; and this takes us back to the previousoption.Collective identities do not emerge from thin air —they need “basicground materials”; similarly, they do not emerge on their own— theyare promoted and shaped with initiatives in diverse fields such aspolitics and education. If we want a certain kind of Europe —here wehave suggested a complex and open plurinational federalism— weneed to work, using the materials from our respective traditions, to