The panel will examine the ability of EU institutions to create an EU political identity and its relationship with the EU as a state. While the EU already has many of the functions of a state, such as a currency, fiscal rules, a constitutional court, its political identity appears to remain weak. The panel will focus on external elements of an identity that policy makers in modern  states in Europe have usually developed and as part of state building, such as a discourse, myths and norms about the state and its specific qualities (often in contrast to other neighbouring states), aims and policies about macroeconomic policy, legal integration, borders and foreign relations and its specific cultural heritage. These elements have often provided citizens and officials with features to value and legitimated state action.

Theoretically, its starting point will be ‘strategic constructivism’, analysing how actors construct norms, ideas for their own purposes. It therefore looks at which actors have sought to develop the EU’s identity, the instruments they have used to do this (eg myths, symbols, particular discourses and ideas, specific policies or programmes), the key features of the identity they have sought to develop, the constraints and opposition faced and then outcomes. It thus seeks to understand the gap between the EU’s state-like legal powers and its weaker and more limited political identity, which has limited its capacity to attract support and legitimacy for its actions.