Identity/difference and the EU

Abstract

As the prime example of community-building in international relations, how does the EU interact with difference, and with what implications for regional and global order? While some scholars argue that the EU has succeeded in constructing a postmodern community where self/other distinctions are blurred not only within the community but also in relation to its outside, others contend that the EU replicates the nation-state form in terms of externalizing difference and legitimizing a violent relationship with others. By applying the three-dimensional framework of self/other interaction, this chapter argues that the EU promotes a partly inclusive/partly exclusive collective identity, and as a result its identity interactions with outsider states are characterized by considerable diversity and variability. Thus, the EU defies such binary classifications as postmodern/modern or postnationalist/pan-nationalist and is uncomfortably (or, alternatively, productively) situated in between. While some of its interactions with outside states are securing of its identity, others are not, and the EU, as an example of a collective identity formation beyond the state, has not been able to supersede Othering. As empirical evidence, the chapter comparatively analyzes the cases of the EU’s interaction with CEES (prior to 2004 enlargement), Morocco, and Turkey (prior to declaration of its candidacy in 1999).