European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

198 EUROPEAN IDENTITY. INDIVIDUAL, GROUP AND SOCIETYit become obvious that they required treatment of supranationalnature. So the Organization for European Economic Cooperation(OEEC, 1948), the Council of Europe (1949) and the European Coaland Steel Community (1951) were created, after which Europe came tomean, for the world elites and the media, an economic agent on aworld-wide scale and not only a part of the map. This corresponds withthe fact that in that moment, when referring to the promotion ofEuropean unity, it meant almost only fostering a unified and healthymanagement of the continent’s economic problems. This was theunderlying meaning of Europeanness when the European EconomicCommunity was established in 1957 by the Treaty of Rome.This implied that the new meaning of Europeanness was bornunder the sign of the economy and that the new relationship system inwhich European identity manifested itself was that of the greaterglobal economic processes. In fact, this is how it is still seen by themedia, which tends to correlate Europe with the United States andJapan, regarding Europe implicitly as one of the three great economicconglomerates emerging from the mass of nations which are oftenvaguely referred to as Third World or developing countries. Belongingto Europe meant still being amongst the great, from an economicstandpoint.However, it became increasingly clear that the economic managementof the continent could not be efficient in the long run if it was notbased on continental political and social management . Europe had tomean an ensemble of societies socially and politically responsible for theircommon future. This is how the Treaty of Maastricht was reached, whichin 1993 changed the name of European Economic Community for thatof European Union. It sealed the on-going yearly attempts to manage toassociate being European with a co-operative lifestyle in a unitary space offreedom, security and recognition of human rights, as it was formulatedsoon afterwards at the meeting of the European Council in Tampere.This was the path travelled up to now for the reconstruction of theidea of Europe by the elites, always somewhat ahead of its institutionalconstruction. We now fulfil the two first conditions previously definedas essential for the promotion of a social identity: having a well-definedidea of the meaning of that identity and being able to realise themeaning of that identity in a map of relationships established accordingto some particular criterion.I would also add that if this idea of Europe were to be madepresent in classrooms, it would have to be transmitted through socialrepresentations familiar to students. I believe this will cause somedifficulties. Firstly, because the context of social relationships in which