The European Union is often understood through its motto âunited in diversity,â adopted in 2000 and in use for years earlier. Yet the primary focus has often centered on unity or the policies that bring together the divergent populations of the Union. Diversity is self-evident and obvious. However, this diversity is at the core of the European integration project and the novel ways in which the EU has been recognizing difference and incorporating it into its institutions and modus operandi constitutes an often-neglected aspect of EU integration.1
For over a decade, the European Union appears to be lost in an endless series of crises, beginning with the global economic crisis of 2008, the subsequent Eurozone crisis, the migration crisis, Brexit, and the COVID 19 crisis. These have constituted the most serious challenges to the European Union since the establishment of the European Community of Coal and Steel more than half a century earlier. The integration project has seen periods of economic stagnation and political conflict, including President de Gaulleâs âNonâ to British Membership, the period of âEurosclerosisâ during the oil shock of the 1970s, and political stagnation of the Community. Even during the decades preceding the current crises, there have been serious setbacks, including the French and Dutch rejection of the European constitution, the Danish referendum in which the Maastricht Treaty was temporarily rejected, and other setbacks to European integration.
The past decade, with its recession and the ensuing debt crisis in recent years, has raised a question of economic and financial collapse and tested the solidarity of the Union to its limits. In addition to the difficulties of the EU in responding effectively to the economic crisis and its subsequent debt and currency crises, the difficulties in persuading German citizens to support the economies in Europeâs South, particularly Greece, demonstrated the constraints of the EU. Solidarity is always a fragile good; many modern states suffer from the difficulty of convincing their citizens of the need for solidarity with co-citizens. In addition, the European project has been challenged by populist parties. Combining anti-elite rhetoric with hostility toward migration and global cooperation, these parties have been successful in elections in recent years and have found copycats among mainstream parties. Some mainstream parties, British conservatives in particular, have challenged the usefulness of the European integration project and some of its basic premises. The âBrexitâ referendum in June 2016 resulted in a majority of citizens in a Member State voting to leave the European Union. Thus, the European integration project finds itself in the most serious crisis since its beginnings in the 1950s. Yet it has also succeeded in establishing an unprecedented level of cooperation and integration on the European continent. In core areas of EU politics, for example environment, transport, internal market, and consumer protection, it has established a web of rules, which apply to more than 400 million people. In fact, despite or because of the crisis, the EU has increased in popularity among its citizens, and record numbers identify themselves as Europeans. This paradox between a high level of integrationâoften invisible to most citizens or taken for grantedâand its challenges merits a revaluation of the European Union as a polity that has sought to accommodate difference. Diversity is inherent in any social group as a result of the multitude of its composing identities. Unless oppressed by authoritarian rule, diversity is intrinsically in permanent tension with the unity of the respective group.
Crisis and resilience shine a light on a core challenge and achievement of the EU, namely its ability to accommodate diversity. We argue that the EU has developed a set of unique responses to the challenges of diversity throughout its existence. A union of not just diverse states but citizens with divergent understandings of citizenship, solidarity, and a variety of national identities has had to find novel ways to incorporate difference. Rather than a ready-made plan, the European project gradually built up institutions and instruments to mediate and incorporate this diversity. We will argue that this experience also offers insight into how states can engage with diversity. As such, we analyze the European Union through the lens with which one might view a state and argue that its policies contain lessons for other states.
The European Union since its founding has been defined by its diversity in terms of languages, religions, historical experiences, and traditions. While observers often note that the EU has become more diverse with the enlargement toward post-Communist countries, they may easily downplay the variety among (and within) the Member States of the âoldâ EU.2 In response, the EU has developed a careful web of institutions and policies that seek to accommodate this diversity while allowing the EU to function and evolve. The recent crises highlighted not only the tenuous nature of these structures, but also the mechanisms that the EU has developed to weather the crises.
This is not to argue that the EU with all its institutions and structural particularities constitutes a role model for countries seeking to accommodate diversity around the world, or that the EU offers a set blueprintâin fact, its ability to respond through creative ambiguity to challenges of diversity offers greater insight than the formal institutions themselves. In general, the transfer of institutions without accounting for different contexts has not served the process of state-building and democratization. Yet, understanding how one polity addresses a particular feature of its social structure, be it inequality, size, or diversity, can help draw broader lessons.
The core argument of this book is that the EU has developed implicit and explicit forms of addressing the diversity that extend beyond merely acknowledging the diversity of its Member States. These range from offering a distinct layer of European citizenship, to prohibiting discrimination, to developing institutional mechanisms that ensure a balance of the majority while giving a voice to smaller Member States. This development was piecemeal and gradual, rather than being based on a grand design of how to accomplish âunity through diversity.â We argue that an essential feature of the EUâs approach to diversity has been not by design, but by confronting particular challenges over time, thus creating an evolving and growing response to diversity. What evolved is not a unified, coherent set of laws or policies, but a complex, multi-layered, and asymmetric web. The result is by no means comprehensive or perfect. National minorities are often marginalized both nationally and in the EU, including the large pan-European Roma community. Racial diversity and migration are often marginalized, as numerous EU Member States still refuse to recognize their own diversity through migration.
What the EU is, was, or should be has been one of the most difficult questions to answer. It has been variously called an âempireâ (Zielonka 2005, pp. 11â14), a âsmall powerâ (Toje 2010, pp. 5â10, 182â184), a community of values (Richardson 2002â2003), a system of governance (Jordan 2001), a trading power (Meunier and NicolaĂŻdis 2006), a normative power (Diez 2005), and much else. The variety of labels often reflects different perspectives. Seen as a foreign policy power, it gains a different shape than as an actor upon and together with the Member States.
The multitude of ascriptions is also a result of the EU itself having been notoriously elusive in its self-definition (Zielonka 2005, pp. 4â7). This evasion has been largely an exercise in survival and adaptability. The creative ambiguity of the EU has been a core feature of the Union and also what has kept it going. In fact, this conundrum itself is already a response to the challenges of diversity. The EU could be understood as an âincompletely theorized agreement,â a term coined by the American constitutional lawyer Cass Sunstein. He notes that agreement on overarching concepts might be elusive. Ambiguity and abstractionârather than great detailâcan provide accommodation for otherwise conflicting positions (Sunstein 2001, p. 56). While such an approach might be criticized for avoiding confrontation on key issues in a society, âincompletely theorized agreementsâ have clear benefits in divided societies: âEspecially in a diverse society, silenceâon something that may prove false, obtuse, or excessively contentiousâcan help minimize conflictâŠand save a great deal of time and expenseâ (Sunstein 2001, p. 58). As such, these types of agreements not only reduce âthe political cost of enduring disagreementsâ (Sunstein 2001, p. 60), but might also provide for the necessary institutional stability. Had the European Union at its foundation as European Economic Community been defined as a confederation or as a federation, the project would have alienated a number of Member States and political actors. It is unlikely that any subsequent treaty would have been signed, not to mention ratified, had it contained such a clear definition of what the EU was. In fact, the creative ambiguity of what the European Union is has not only spurred vivid debate for decades among scholars, but has in many ways been the foundation of the European Union.
Just like a state that calls itself a âDemocratic Peopleâs Republicâ should not be taken at face value (but rather the opposite), a polity that refuses to call itself anything should not mean that scholars should refrain from naming it.
JiĆĂ PĆibĂĄĆ has observed that âthe Unionâs complexity, polycentric structure and functionally differentiated pluralism represent a departure from the nation-state and its sovereignty as a unified system of representative authority in full territorial and political controlâ (PĆibĂĄĆ 2009, p. 30). Indeed, much of the literature on the EU notes its distinct and unique character.3 Michael Walzer in his discussion of toleration, to which we will return in the next chapter, argues that, in addition to different regimes of toleration, the European Union âisnât an empire or a consociation but something different from both and perhaps new in the worldâ (Walzer 1999, p. 48). Yet this distinction risks leading to a conceptual dead end by arguing and reinforcing the EUâs approach as unique and incomparable. Of course, the EUâwith its institutional structure and historical trajectoryâis unlike any other state or international organization, and is thus unique. However, the ghost of uniqueness renders comparison fu...