ABSTRACT
Following the end of the Cold War, an explicit and unprecedented debate emerged surrounding the institutional collective identity of the European project in a post-communist and post-Western era (Delanty, 2001, 2006; Delanty and Rumford, 2005). Questions concerning institutional legitimacy, the future limits of European borders, the future shape and scope of the European polity and the issue of the Europeanness of Europe have all collided in a wider debate centred upon the potential ambiguity and a potential crisis of European identity. This wider debate has been constituted by two key strands (Edwards, 2009). The first has attempted to respond to the charge and discussion of legitimacy crisis, with work focusing upon the questions of the need, the nature and the potentiality of a European people. The second strand, in contrast, has turned to question European institutional identity more generally, attempting to respond to the explicit context of institutional uncertainty fuelled by the end of the Cold War and augmented by the potential crisis of overall European institutional legitimacy. It is specifically the second strand of this debate that this chapter explores through the context of European Union enlargement in the post-Cold War era.
