Culture, Values and European Integration

Abstract

The meaning of Europe has changed all too often in the long history of the continent. Rarely has the idea of Europe lasted unchallenged by other forces within the diverse continent. A cultural and value based concept of identity has been the usual expression of Europe’s diversity. The strife for a political notion of identity, all the more based on freedom and on the very diversity of Europe, is as new as the process of European integration through the modus of the European Union is. This paper will discuss the traditional ingredients of European identity. It will then look into the notion of European citizenship as it is developing inside the European Union. This notion of citizenship and "ownership" of the European Union will be reflected in light of the notion of universality, Europe’s relationship with "the others" and as a potential basis for defining Europe’s role in the world. The paper then looks into the increasingly controversial debate in Europe over the notion of man in the context of medical developments and bioethical controversies about the beginning and the end of human life. Finally it takes up the question as to whether the emerging European constitution will be able to contribute to a political identity of Europe, thus transforming cultural traditions and European values into cornerstones of a future political role of Europe.