The European Identity - In Times Eurozone Crisis, Nationalism and Euroscepticism

Abstract

This assessment was created in the context of the seminar ‘Ideas, Ideologies and Identities in Europe’. Therefore the essay seeks to answer if there are any European people, what does it mean to be European and can be the European identity be created? In order to answer those questions the essay is going to discuss the European identity in the wake of the Eurozone Crisis. I chose this subject, because the Eurozone Crisis is not only a financial crises but also a European identity crisis.

It was is a very much discussed subject in Europe, when the EU fell in a state of crisis in 2008. Nationalism tends to be more present since the financial breakdown in some European countries. The refugee crisis, which was happening the same time, wasn’t helping the situation either. Is the European Union not based on a tolerant multicultural concept, after all what happened in World War II and Communism? The Article 2of Treaty of European Union specifies the values of the EU. It says that “The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, liberty, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities” (Lerch 2018:1). So why the nationalistic identity was growing so popular during the financial crisis? For that it needs a closer look at what happened in the last years, when the Eurozone Crisis started to entangle the causes of the rediscovery of nationalism.

Keywords: European Union, Common Currency, integration

JEL Classification: J10