ABSTRACT
Until the Maastricht Treaties (1991), the European Community was primarily an economic community legitimated by economic efficiency criteria. I Maastricht, however, initiated the transformation of the Community into a European Union (EU), which continued with the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997). These treaties vest greater powers in EU institutions. The EU is thus increasingly a supranational regime, substantially restricting member states' scope for action, and whose decisions directly affect citizens' lives. These decisions also affect politically sensitive areas that had hitherto been dealt with at the nation-state level (including social and moral issues). These developments have been politicising the EU and, consequently, engendering legitimation problems. The discussion on the democratic deficiencies of the EU, which has arisen only since this transformation of the European Community, is an expression of the legitimation issue. Many feel the EU can attain democratic legitimacy only if a European demos with a collective identity takes shape.2 This can be maintained even if the democratic deficiencies of the EU were to be eliminated institutionally by substantially expanding the rights of the European Parliament. A viable European democracy requires a European demos that conceives of itself as a collectivity, considers itself represented by the Parliament, and makes the latter the addressee of relevant demands. However, in view of the cultural plurality and heterogeneity of European nation states, it is doubtful whether the constitution of a European demos with a tenable collective identity is possible at alP
A further transformation of the EU must increase these doubts. At the 1992 Copenhagen summit, the then EU heads of government decided that the countries of Central and Eastern Europe could become members of the EU if they so desired and if they meet certain criteria for accession. There are now a number of candidates for accession, and negotiations are being conducted with a first group of countries. For a number of reasons, eastward
enlargement is likely to make it even more difficult to develop a European identity. First, because the territorial limits of Europe are vague: where does it end in the east, or where should it end? A clearly defined territory is at least a useful, indeed necessary, precondition for the cognitive constitution of an 'us' that distinguishes itself from 'others' and which is the vehicle of a collective identity.4 Second, including additional nation states increases the cultural plurality of the EU still more. And, third, it cannot be excluded that, over and above this pluralisation, there is a cultural gap between Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe. Such a gap can be caused by different traditions and historical events in the distant past but also by socialisation and experience in the opposing societal systems in which people in Eastern and Western Europe lived from the end of the Second World War until the collapse of the communist states.
