MARKET CITIZENSHIP: THE MOST IMPORTANT DIMENSION OF COMMON EUROPEAN UNION IDENTITY

Abstract

To be a fully-fledged political community, as is the ultimate aim of the European unification project launched after the Second World War, the constituent citizens need a common identity. Although the changing geo-political and economic conditions have increased the need to construct such a common identity day after day, this issue is still a challenge yet to be resolved for the European Union (EU). Since the beginning, however, a common political identity (citizenship) based on a democratic form of political culture and a market-oriented form of economic culture has been promoted as the likeliest choice for the EU to aim at. It means that common EU identity has to lean on some political (civic culture, democracy, human rights, rule of law, etc.) and economic (market orientation/culture) principles as main dimensions. Therefore, the European Community (subsequently the EU) has generated various policies to construct such a common political identity. This article aims to show that constructing a market citizenship has invaded the core place from the beginning within the identity construction efforts of the EU. That is to say the policies to create an EU-wide economic citizenship based on the discourse of market economy has continuously taken precedence and key role on the way of constructing a common EU political identity. Market citizenship or EU citizenship should be understood in this study as a societal-normative concept that aims to equip individuals with the behavioural rules of market economy or EU political community, rather than only a legal-formal concept.