So I’m British and this is always a controversial topic in the UK as I’m sure many of you can imagine given our recent history with Europe. What inspired my to write this is that at work today two people were talking about Europeans and how Europeans are so nice and how Europe is so lovely. It didn’t occur to them that they are Europeans, they were just talking about Europeans as something that they themselves were not.
There was absolutely no political motive behind their conversation, and they weren’t Brexiteers, it was just a normal conversation with no thought in it. Which made me think that not being European is such a deep part of the British psych that people just automatically see Europeans as a different people.
I was just wondering how it is in other European countries? I’m not talking about being pro EU and recognising its benefits, but real sense of European identity?
34 comments
I am definitely European. As opposed to Asian or African. And I have no business with the Commonwealth. So, I am European. But I am Austrian before being European.
Super European. Parents from two different European countries, born in a third and living in a fourth now and raising a family. I appreciate I’m not a standard case
I’m Italian therefore I’m European.
I’m from my city therefore I’m Italian.
It would be absurd to be Italian without being European.
Identity is plural not monolithic.
I’m Polish and I do. Poland may be more conservative nowadays, but its culture and history is completely tied to European affairs. I can’t imagine anyone not to perceive themselves as Europeans – whether they are pro-EU or against. It’s just a fact.
Personally I am a Europe enthusiast and I feel lucky to have been born here. I couldn’t tell how many Poles feel this way tho. I would assume some people may just not care, but if you asked them they would say they are first Polish and second European.
There are of course eurosceptics and they wouldn’t like to be called European, but my guess is they are a minority.
I live in Scotland now and you can kind of feel this vibe, as if the UK wanted to be different in every way from the continent.
In Finnish reckoning there’s often a disconnect between “Europe” in colloquial terminology vs. “Europe” in terms of identity.
It’s common to talk about “going to Europe” or “things going on in Europe”, referring most commonly to the parts of Europe south of the Baltic Sea.
In a common Finnish mindset, we effectively live on an island, just like the British. A great portion of Finns live in the southwestern part of the country, far from the land borders to Sweden and Norway which are located far to the north. If you go abroad, it’s by airplane or by ship. Europe is out there, beyond the water.
But if you asked a Finn “are you European” or “is Finland located in Europe”, they’d invariably say yes.
Personally I do feel strongly European, and would identify as some kind of mix of British, English and European. I’m not sure what order I’d put them in, they’re all a part of my identity.
I do find it a bit of a shame how rarely people feel that way in the UK though. I suspect that decades of nonsense from the Eurosceptic media may have played a big part in that. I was appalled when Brexit happened, because it didn’t feel to me like separating away from some foreign thing, but about breaking apart a relationship which I felt a part of.
Ofcourse I am European, what else would I be, other than European? Being Slovenian does not take away from being European, if that was the question.
The British people talking about other Europeans.. are you sure they didn’t also mean themselves? Maybe for the Brits, “European” people is synonymous with “continental” people, that could make sense. But Brits are Europeans, when it comes to geography, history, culture.. How is that a controversial topic?
I’m French, and then European.
In higher education I had the opportunity to meet people thinking of themselves as European before [nationalities]. It’s nothing new in fact, pan-europeanism was super trendy before WW1 broke History for decades then WW2 cut Europe in two parts. Even before that… It’s not called “Erasmus program” for nothing: any true intellectual in Erasmus’s time had to do their tour of Europe, it was the fashionable thing to do.
I don’t think we will become a federation. Too many languages, English has no claim to be “the language of the EU”, besides English won’t be here forever. If you believe otherwise, beware: that’s what us Frenchmen were thinking too, and other before us, and English won’t magically escape the rule. Anyway. For cultural and geographical reasons, I don’t think Europe will become a federation à la United States.
However we will invent something else. Something plural, messy, weird, and innovative. Like the Eurovision but bigger. A new kind of entity, somewhere between national and supranational.
So I suppose my grandchildren will still think of themselves as both French and European (and many other things). A federal European entity won’t magically coalesce outside of the elites. But it’s fine. In fact it is great. We’re working on the Empire to end all Empires, here
Yes, I do. There are overlapping identities, and some are stronger than others, but European is among them. I feel it both on a personal level, as someone who has family abroad and as someone who has spent some years abroad as well. It’s also there on a more general level. Denmark doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and we have influences and interactions back and forth with the peoples around us (these of course often being other Europeans) both now and through our long history, so this creates a sort of shared space, experience, and frame of reference, as the same events had effects around the continent. Sure, this isn’t 1:1 and some countries are closer or more distant to each other than others (I feel closer to a Swede than I do to a Spaniard), but that is a spectrum and not a binary yes/no
It’s a very European thing to deny one is European but to consider every other European country European.
The way I see it, it’s a purely geographical thing. Any country that falls between Lisbon/Galway and the Ural mountains is European. For example, from experience Britain, I think, is culturally closer to, say, France than the US (in spite of the fact that in America they speak English).
Generally yes, but it can depend on the context. When talking about the corruption and the things we dislike about this country then we definitely talk about Europe as this separate other that we can feel cut off and alienated from.
And generally because of our language and complete lack of any people we can even remotely understand there is often this sense of isolation and loneliness. I mean if you look around virtually every other European country has at least one neighbor that they can basically completely understand and usually a few that they can get a good grasp of. Even the Finns have Estonia and vica versa, Latvia and Lithuania to a lesser degree, the only truly linguistically isolated countries are Greece, Albania and Hungary but in the case of the former, at least they are Indo-European so there is some more distant resemblance, or in the case of Greek, loads of loanwords in other languages.
And this sort of loneliness and isolation is a foundational experience and creates a sense of otherness even if we do have other experiences that show us how similar we are across the continent.
Luv me europe, luv me european brothers, luv me the greeks and poles especially, hate hating on each other, hate conflict simple as.
I’m British too but now live in the Netherlands. Honestly I feel like a lot of the perception in the UK derives from both being an island and outside the Schengen area. Now I live in NL I can hop on a train and be in Germany or Belgium in less than a couple of hours – no passport required – Europe no longer feels like something you would have to plan to visit – more like something I exist in.
I’m Portuguese and European. I am both. There are more things uniting all Europeans than things dividing us.
I also feel a strong link to the EU. I feel a stronger sense of union with Europeans from an EU country than with Europeans from a non-EU country. For example, Switzerland and Austria side by side in the map but I feel a stronger link to Austria than to Switzerland. Same with UK and Ireland. Can’t explain why.
I am Northern Irish, British and European. We have so much shared culture and history as well as common attitudes to human rights and natural justice. I simply can not divorce one from the other. I am a proud European.
I was born, raised and I live in Belgium. Like most people here I affiliated more than with my province. I’m from my province first. And second European. That’s maybe just me, but I’m even super proud of being European. Then Belgian. But that’s maybe just me.
But I think I speak for all of us by saying Wallonia is just an instution, not a national identity.
I think it depends to who my recepient is. With other Belgians I feel from my province. With French or Germans, I feel Belgian. With Americans, Japaneses or Nigerians I feel European.
I’ve witnessed the same in the UK, many Brits see themselves as separate. To be fair, it is an island nation.
That said, as a ‘Dutchman’ in the UK, I always say my nationality is Frisian first, European second. That is because I never identified as Dutch, I was raised as a Frisian, speaking Frisian and honestly, loving Fryslan. Europe protected our language and identity and stopped decades of the Dutch government trying to erase the Frisian language.
I consider myself Slovene and European. My national identity may be slightly stronger than the European one.
I feel like there is a mentality that the ex-West block countries are more European than the ex-East block countries. The further East a country is located, the less European it is considered.
I used to not care about that, but since going on erasmus I have developped a stronger sense of european identity
I see myself as an european, in the sense that I view europeans as a whole as brothers almost, no matter te country they’re from. It’s like a shared identity of sorts. However, I don’t see european politics in the same light. I think european politics are very shady and run by interests. A lot of corruption and lobying in the higher ranks of the decision makers of the EU, I have no doubt about that.
I think in general, people in my country (Portugal) do see themselves as being european. But obviously, our nationality ranks higher than the colective european nationality.
On a side note: I think europe should have a collective army/navy/air force. We’re too reliant on American protection when it comes to that. I think if Europe as a whole came together under one army, one banner, we’d have a much more effective and advanced defence sector. Idk what form this would take exactly, but I’d be favorable to that.
Of course i am europan but i wouldn’t introduce myself as a European if anyone should ask. When asked i Will tell people that i am Swedish.
Currently I find the European “identity” completely meaningless. I identify closer with my mother language than this broad notion of “European”
Am I European? Yes no doubt. Do I feel European from the political standpoint so to speak? No, and I don’t think I ever will.
Don’t feel EU member at all.
I’m dutch first. World citizen next
Maby european as in continent somewhere in between.
But not EU member.
The blue collar people I’m part of and the ones I know have a hate/love relationship with “brussels”(term we use to refer to EU.)
As far as I am aware, nobody I know feels European.
I’m from Estonia. Of course I consider myself European and I think most of us consider ourselves European.
I am from Croatia so I’m Croatian. Croatia is in Europe so I’m European. Those two identities are inherently linked to eachother.
We never refer to ourselves as Europeans other than when we talk to non-Europeans because explaining what or where Croatia is a long conversation on it’s own. If we talk to other Europeans we say we’re Croatians.
When people talk about Europeans what they usually mean is west Europeans because those are the cultures they’re most exposed to other than their own. If someone says “Europeans do X.” or “Europeans are like Y.” I can assure you, no one is talking about Croatia or the Balkans.
As a Czech I do feel like a European. And I’m a proud European! Europe is very diverse (which I love) but there is a huge cultural history we share and each parts of Europe have influenced each other tremendously. (Like someone said, with the exception of Ru*sia. I don’t feel any connection to them at all.)
I’m Norwegian first, European second. I never introduce myself as European, i introduce myself as Norwegian. but if somebody calls me European instead if Norwegian i don’t have a problem with that. Because i am both Norwegian and European.
I’m from Romania and lived in 3 countries in the past 10 years (Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands). It may be because of this but I definitely think of myself more as European than Romanian. I think we have so much shared history, culture, values, shared interests in promoting democratic values, climate protection, protecting vulnerable social groups etc. despite the actions of individual governments. I’m very much pro EU, pro expanding the EU’s powers into federalisation because of those shared issues. Because of the need for a common army to combat the expansion of Russian/Chinese influence, the need of a common border and immigration policy and the fact that recent history proved that over reliance on the US isn’t feasible.
Yeah. I consider Europe as my home. Especially after I migrated to the US it became clear to me that Europe that the similarities between different countries in Europe are way more than the differences.
I feel Spanish first, then Catalan and European. The first time that I got to feel my “Europeanness” for real was when I went to Japan on holidays. There I met people from several European countries and felt an immediate affinity and almost a sense of “brotherhood” with them. Since then, every time I travel abroad and return to Europe I feel back at home.
Im British.
I am also European.
I married an American. When I go to the US, I realise how much more I have in common with Europeans than Americans.
While the language is the same with America, I feel culturally closer to other Western European countries.
As a Norwegian I feel Norwegian, and even though I am a European as well, that is more of geograpical thing.
Other than Norwegian I feel more Scandinavian and Nordic, than European.
The Nordic countrys have so strong bonds.
I’m Italian and feel zero sense of shared identity with northern European scandinavian countries or the Baltic republics mainly cause the culture, food, language, architecture, political and economical issues are so different. I also don’t feel akin to Germans (lived in Germany for 7 years and no thanks) or Dutch people. Slavic countries feel a little less weird cause people are less posh I guess. Most outsiders would assume that since Italy is in Southern Europe we are automatically buddies with Spanish or Greek people and while I do agree that theres less of a cultural gap (we are notoriously louder etc) i still don’t feel that we are the same. All that said, when I speak to ppl from north and south America or from Asia or Africa, then yea, that’s when I get that feeling of ‘yea I’m European’. Also, being Italian already means very little, most Italians’ cultural identity is based on their region or city’s, like, somebody from Milan is kinda more similar to a Swiss or Austrian person than to somebody from Palermo in Sicily.