Creating Union Citizens to Address Integration Challenges? an Analysis of EU Citizenship Education Policies

This paper in applied political theory will discuss EU citizenship education as a response to European integration challenges. Citizenship education is traditionally used in the (nation)state to raise awareness about rights and duties, increase civic participation and democratic legitimacy, ensure citizens’ loyalty or strengthen social cohesion. It is often invoked in times of crisis, recently also at the EU level. As citizenship education generally refers to citizenship of (nation)states, it is interesting to investigate on how EU discourses conceive a Union citizenship education and interpreted the “European dimension” in education: which kind of European citizenship education is supported at EU level? What are the underlying conceptions of the EU citizen? Did the EU manage to find a way of teaching European citizenship suitable to its situation: without a single state, people and nation, but with a huge diversity to protect? Based on a content analysis of EU documents, I will highlight three citizenship education approaches that have successively been put forward at European level, by partly but not entirely replacing each other. Relying on normative political theory, I will show that different contradicting citizenship conceptions have been mixed up in EU citizenship education policies. Tensions appear between and within these approaches. I explain that this is due, at least to a certain extent, to a functionalist way of dealing with citizenship education issues. I argue that there is a lack of an in-depth consideration on potential and limits of a transnational citizenship education and a European dimension in this field.