Neofunctionalism, European identity, and the puzzles of European integration

Abstract

This article concentrates on the relationship between neofunctionalist reasoning and the study of collective identities. Recent research confirms what Ernst B. Haas already knew in 1958, namely, that transferring loyalty to Europe and the EU is possible without giving up one's national (or regional or local or gender) identities. But preliminary results challenge the assumption that the transfer of loyalties on to the European level simply followed from the material benefits received through European integration. At the same time, the evidence suggests that socialization into European identity works not so much through transnational processes or through exposure to European institutions, but on the national levels in a process whereby Europeanness or ‘becoming European’ is gradually being embedded in understandings of national identities. This latter reasoning also sheds light on the double puzzle of European integration, i.e. the persistent balance in the EU's constitution-building between supranational and intergovernmental institutions, on the one hand, and the lagging behind of foreign/defense affairs in European integration, on the other. If national processes and collective understandings are crucial to understanding the Europeanization of national identities, this will lead to uneven and varied degrees to which Europe can be embedded in collective identities. Federal states with respective constitutional traditions change their collective understandings more easily to include Europe and orientations toward supranationalism than unitary and centralized states.