Tomorrow’s European identity will be what tomorrow’s Europeans will democratically make of it !

For centuries the question of collective identity has been one of the most controversial question at the core of the European debate. In the past decade it has become a crucial topic within the European political debate, impacting key issues such as immigration, limits of the EU or relationship with the USA. Indeed, behind what looks like a very polemical question lies many answers which will determine the future of the EU and of its 500 millions citizens.

If we want to go beyond polemics in order to try to understand what exactly is at stakes, we need to go back to history, … as always when it comes to Europe’s future.

The way Europeans have been looking at the question of collective identity represents a perfect example of the best and the worst that European culture can bring to the world. In one way, it is the story of a long fight, throughout centuries, getting out of the legacy of ‘tribal identity’, defined by ‘blood’, and reaching a new level of definition by ‘soil’ which is today the largely dominant European concept.

The move from ‘blood’ to ‘soil’ was essentially generated by the construction of large nation states who required the capacity to integrate population from different tribal (blood) origins. Growing population heterogeneity under increasing power homogeneity was the main driving force for such a process. Taking its full force during the 19^th century, it generated strong backlashes during the 20^th (such as the 20s and 30s European xenophobic regimes) and then became a widely accepted norm at the end of the 20^th century.
Meanwhile, as anything in life, this successful extraction from tribal behaviours lead to new kind of problems : the main one being, what to do if the ‘soil’ definition of identity starts to generate growing questions about the identity itself : either because the ‘existing soil’ welcomes newcomers with very diverging views, either because the power structure wants to extend the ‘soil’ to areas which will drastically increase the existing heterogeneity.
Currently the debate around these questions is taking the form of a growing political confrontation between the usual suspects of the century old alternative ‘blood/soil’. But as the challenges are new, none of the two sides can bring lasting solutions because they both are part of a debate mostly closed at the end of the 20^th century, while the challenges are belonging to the 21^st century.

Therefore in order to get out of sterile confrontation and try to move forward with effective policies, one need to add a third component to the old debate around blood or soil. And that’s the concept of ‘values’. It is already, slowly, emerging within our society but it still seen as a secondary argument, when it is the key one for the coming decades.

Indeed it provides a completely new set of entries into the debate :
. it takes growing population heterogeneity as an historical fact linked with the increasing global population and growing transportation means, and human nature,
. it does not try to suppress heterogeneity, as does the definition by ‘blood’ ( which means race, tribe, …) which closes the doors to newcomers and fantasizes on an Europe able to reject the rest of the world.
. it does not pretend to accommodate all kinds of heterogeneity, as with the definition by ‘soil’, which puts the burden of adapting essentially on the pre-existing populations and fantasizes on the human ability to be nice to everybody else.
. it tries to define a core set of values, agreed upon in a democratic way, which are defining the collective identity and put it as a minimum requirement to share the common identity.

Such a ‘value’ based identity process allows to go beyond the limits of ‘blood’ or ‘soil’, it can be applied internally (immigrants) as well as externally (enlargement of the EU or special relationship to the USA).
And it is a dynamic one : European values of today (such as democracy, human rights, sustainable development, … ) are not those of yesterday and maybe will not be those of tomorrow. Because the EU, like everything in life and history, is the result of what the Europeans are doing, tomorrow’s EU values will be mostly defined, for the best or for the worst, by its upcoming generations.

A common identity defined through values rather than through less sophisticated criteria such as ‘blood’ or ‘soil’ is adapted to the complexity of cultural backgrounds of our 27 Member states. And it is adapted to the 21^st century world. Meanwhile as it has be defined collectively, and can evolved, it fits perfectly with what Newropeans wants to achieve with the democratization of the EU. Though it is only so, and I want to put an emphasis on that aspect, if those values are resulting from a large democratic support and not from the pressure of any religious, social or political minority.