European identity
Sir: Alexander Chancellor (Long life, 18 June) echoes the widely accepted view of the European Union as a ‘bulwark against the nationalism that is rising again’. The European project was, of course, conceived as a means of averting the catastrophes that nationalism wreaked upon Europe during the 20th century.
However, in practice the EU has stoked nationalism within its constituent member states. As a top-down, elite-driven process, EU integration has crucially failed to mobilise the masses in favour of a common European identity that transcends national allegiances. Combine this with a simultaneous erosion of state sovereignty and the EU’s democratic deficit, and it is not difficult to understand why nationalist sentiment has again resurfaced.
The rise of Greece’s far-right, hard Eurosceptic Golden Dawn has been catalysed by the punishing measures imposed upon Greece by eurozone officials. Even in Britain, political resistance to European integration has proven instrumental in generating the ideological foundations for contemporary English nationalism.
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