Nationalistic Independent Movements Within the European Union and Its Challenge to Create a Territorial Identity

Author(s):  
Demi Wilhelmina Maria van Huisseling

Throughout history, humanity has been known to move in groups as a way of surviving, to expand their identity and culture. In Europe this has led to international and civil wars in the past but changed with the creation of the European Union. This chapter analyzes the creation and demarcation of nations during the past, the territorial identity that was formed and the need of the EU to create a European Identity to overcome the threat of independent movements. Secessionist nationalistic movements have gained importance since the economic crisis which started in 2007 and have been rising in different regions and countries of the EU. The main question that needs to be solved in this chapter: How does the EU cope with the rise of new nationalistic movements? It can only be overcome with the creation of a European territorial identity.

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 458-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Hastings ◽  
Jason Heyes

For the past decade the European Commission has urged EU member states to pursue ‘flexicurity’ policies aimed at achieving employment growth and social inclusion. However, the economic crisis and turn to austerity across the EU has presented the flexicurity model with a substantial challenge. This article argues that since 2008 labour policies across the EU have exhibited shared tendencies, but support for measures that might contribute to the achievement of the security aspects of flexicurity has been substantially weakened. In developing this argument, the article presents findings from a cluster analysis and detailed investigations of labour policies in EU member countries. The article also discusses the implications of the findings for comparative institutional analysis. It highlights differences in the approaches of countries that are commonly treated as members of the same institutional family, as well as similarities in the policies adopted by countries commonly associated with different ‘varieties’ of capitalism.


2006 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 36-41
Author(s):  
Ana Maria Anghelea

When at the end of the 1980s the EU launched a number of policies aimed to creating a European identity, the member states responded by incorporating into the Maastricht Treaty a clause stating that the European Union should respect the member states’ respective national identities (article F, point1). This reaction, along with the introduction of principle of subsidiary and the rejection of the word “federal”, revealed that many member states considered the creation of a European identity as a potential threat to their own national identities and their citizen’s national loyalties (Hojelid, 2001).


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 159-170
Author(s):  
Andreja Sršen ◽  
Davor Piskač

Croatian national identity and the European Union The permanent anthropological determinant of men which provides them with a feeling of social security is the feeling of belonging to a larger group of people. Various forms of such affiliations existed in the past. They represent older types of collective relationships, such as tribes, the Greek poleis, medieval kingdoms and the like. All of them exhibit the fundamental features of the “structure” of identity. Nowadays, Croatia being at the doorstep of the Euro­pean Union, the issue of national identity becomes a matter of its internal structure that re­sists integration, yet seeking to become a part of the “European identity structure”. Croatia’s scepticism towards the EU stems from the questions of whether the European identity exists and which possibilities for preserving all the structural elements of Croatian national identity, including language as the main aspect, exist within the European Union. The territory, lan­guage and customs acquire defensive features that are becoming increasingly disintegrating and decreasingly integrating in the multi-ethnic Europe. Chorwacka tożsamość narodowa i Unia Europejska Trwałą determinantą antropologiczną człowieka, dającą mu poczucie bezpieczeństwa spo­łecznego, jest świadomość przynależności do większej grupy. Niegdyś istniały różne formy takiej przynależności, a mianowicie starsze typy związków społecznych, jak plemiona, greckie polis, średniowieczne królestwa itd. Współcześnie te formy przynależności zbiorowej są związane ze strukturą narodową, z państwem-narodem lub też ze strukturą ponadnarodową, jaką jest Unia Europejska. W każdej z nich można znaleźć podstawowe cechy strukturalne w postaci tożsamości narodowej lub ponadnarodowej. Obecnie, kiedy Chorwacja oczekuje na przyjęcie do Unii Euro­pejskiej, kwestia tożsamości narodowej staje się sprawą jej wewnętrznej struktury, która stawia opór integracji, ale jednocześnie chce być częścią ponadnarodowej „tożsamości europejskiej”. Sceptycyzm Chorwacji wobec UE wynika ze stawianych pytań: czy istnieje tożsamość europej­ska i jakie są możliwości zachowania wszystkich elementów chorwackiej konstrukcji tożsamości narodowej z językiem jako jej głównym komponentem w obrębie Unii Europejskiej? Terytorium, język i zwyczaje zyskują bowiem cechy defensywne, stając się w wieloetnicznej Europie czynni­kiem coraz bardziej dezintegrującym, a nie służącym integracji.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 80
Author(s):  
Eva Eckert ◽  
Oleksandra Kovalevska

In the European Union, the concern for sustainability has been legitimized by its politically and ecologically motivated discourse disseminated through recent policies of the European Commission and the local as well as international media. In the article, we question the very meaning of sustainability and examine the European Green Deal, the major political document issued by the EC in 2019. The main question pursued in the study is whether expectations verbalized in the Green Deal’s plans, programs, strategies, and developments hold up to the scrutiny of critical discourse analysis. We compare the Green Deal’s treatment of sustainability to how sustainability is presented in environmental and social science scholarship and point out that research, on the one hand, and the politically motivated discourse, on the other, do not correlate and often actually contradict each other. We conclude that sustainability discourse and its keywords, lexicon, and phraseology have become a channel through which political institutions in the EU such as the European Commission sideline crucial environmental issues and endorse their own presence. The Green Deal discourse shapes political and institutional power of the Commission and the EU.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amalie Frese

Abstract Income inequality is at an all-time high in the Europe Union (EU). Implications from the economic crisis which broke out in 2008, and in particularly the austerity measures introduced by Governments in Eurozone countries receiving bailout programmes, created further inequalities, for example between men and women. This paper starts from the hypothesis that whereas other institutions in the EU have played a direct role in tackling the economic crisis, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) may have played a more indirect role, which nonetheless can have an overlooked value in particular for setting direction for legal norms of equality and anti-discrimination in Europe. The paper therefore addresses a legal-empirical question: To what extent does the anti-discrimination case law of the CJEU reflect the increased inequalities in Europe following the economic crisis? Based on a dataset of all anti-discrimination cases of the CJEU, I conduct a quantitative analysis of changes in the case law from before to after the economic crisis. I find that there is only weak evidence, which suggests that the case law of the CJEU reflects the increased inequalities following the economic crisis.


Author(s):  
Kreuschitz Viktor ◽  
Nehl Hanns Peter

This concluding chapter explores EU's anti-subsidy instruments, which are designed to address subsidization by other WTO members. After a hesitant start, the EU since 1995 has progressively used the AS instrument to act against subsidization by third-country governments. While initially focusing on relatively clear-cut export subsidies, over time the EU has more and more also countervailed domestic subsidy programmes. This is clearest in the AS cases initiated against China during the past five years, where the majority of the countervailed programmes have consisted of domestic subsidies. In this context, it is important to note that the findings of specificity reached by the EU in cases concerning China are largely based on the use of facts available, resulting from the imposition of very high burdens of proof on the Chinese government that domestic subsidies in fact are not specific.


2021 ◽  
pp. 27-47
Author(s):  
Renaud Dehousse ◽  
Paul Magnette

EU institutions have frequently been reformed since the origins of what is now the European Union (EU), and particularly so over the past twenty years. This chapter explains why and how this quasi-constant change has taken place. It begins by identifying five phases in this history: the founding, consolidation, relaunch, adaptation, and the current phase of reaction to functional challenges. The chapter then assesses the respective weight of state interests, ideas, and institutions in the evolution of EU institutions. In retrospect, institutional change in the EU appears to have followed a functionalist logic, leading to complex compromises that, in turn, prompt regular calls for ‘simplification’ and democratization.


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (50) ◽  
pp. 33-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Lehmann

It is common today, even in the European media, to treat the current crisis of the European Union almost exclusively as an economic crisis. The present article pretends to show that such a focus is not only wrong but is indeed dangerous for the future development of the European Union as a whole. The article will argue that the present economic crisis simply aggravated – and a lot – a crisis of legitimacy through which the European Union has been passing for some time. Showing that the anti-European tendencies which are spreading throughout the countries of the continent threaten the very future of the European project, the article will make suggestion on reforms for the future development of the EU, alerting to the necessity to finally elaborate once again a coherent argument for the continuation of the European integration process which puts the European population at the heart of the political process instead of just austerity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-209
Author(s):  
Andrew S. Ross ◽  
Aditi Bhatia

The sweeping tide of populism across the globe has given rise to isolationist sentiments that call for the closing of national borders and a return to nativist roots. This has been most evident in Britain in terms of the controversial vote to exit the European Union (EU) during the 2016 referendum (to Leave or Remain) and more recently with the lead up to a general election and mounting pressure on the government to implement an exit strategy. The most vocal proponent of the “leave” movement was the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), reframing the debate on EU membership in terms of invasion and oppression. This paper focuses on precisely this discursive construction of the EU by analyzing UKIP campaign posters through application of Bhatia’s Discourse of Illusion framework on three levels: historicity (use of the past to justify the present or predict the future), linguistic and semiotic action (subjective conceptualizations of reality made apparent through metaphorical rhetoric), and degree of social impact (emergence of delineating categories through ideological narrative).


European Union Politics equips readers to understand the European Union and the topical debates and issues which surround it. Alongside comprehensive coverage of the history, theory, institutions, and policies of the EU, it features chapters on contemporary issues and current debates, including democracy and legitimacy in the EU, citizens and public opinion, the economic crisis, and a new chapter on Brexit. Helpful learning features throughout the text, including key points, questions, and examples, support learning.


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