"European identity": An emerging concept

Phe Idea of European Identity has grown In significance and specificity ove r two millennia. Earlier, the advance was largely generated by opposition t o outsiders, in terms of culture and religion. Those who thought in Europea n terms were long a tiny minority of rulers, clerics, financiers, men of te aming and the arts. Only In the late eighteenth century did bourgeois parti cipation broaden consciousness of European community, linked in the ninetee nth and twentieth centuries to social and political progress. In the past h alf century European identity has gained official sanction as a diplomatic and legislative set of entities. Efforts to underpin existing and to spur n ew mutuality at the folk-level lag, owing to a host of persisting problems - linguistic diversity, disparities of resources, unforgotten grievances, d oubts about the scope of territorial expansion, and a felt imbalance betwee n administrative goals and popular allegiances.