ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some theoretical issues related to the politics of identity at the level of the European Union and examines some concrete examples from EU policies on culture, education and citizenship, hinting at the types of representations of ‘Europe’ that the EU deems appropriate as sources of identification. It seeks to situate the identity politics under study in the context of the crisis of legitimacy facing the European Union. Education takes on the role of passing on an official and highly selective version of European culture, its roots and what it means to be a ‘European’ which resembles much of the traditional roles assigned to education when Western nation states made nationals of the majority of their inhabitants. Since the end of the 1980s much has been written on the issue of ‘European identity’ and the different processes of identity formation taking place inside the European Union.
