European Citizenship and Integration 7 and 10 years after

Call for papers

For the countries that joined the EU with the recent waves of integration, the situation is still very different 7 or 10 years later. The first obvious dichotomy between North and South is juxtaposed with a lot of differences between East and West (which the Structural Funds were meant to reduce). Europeans’ initial expectations were high and nowadays disenchantment is being expressed. In addition, these developments have highlighted the reality and the intensity of internal disparities within each Member State, which concern all citizens and constitute a basis for the implementation of wider solidarity and of some trends in identity and/or nationalist politics, especially with the consequences of the crisis since 2008. A deep ideological crisis seems to be shaking some countries, especially when the national institutions are less recognized or considered legitimate, as in Bulgaria.
Thus, especially for the former satellite countries of the Soviet Union, the European integration is more or less integrated in a long process, as a “return back to Europe” for many, or after the creation of a new State for some. These integrations took effect after negotiations and normalisations, and often after some profound transformations of rules or of the structure of institutions. An institutional “Europeanization”, somehow, that was part of a change that many analysts have called an economic and democratic “transition”.
It is therefore possible to ask whether this integration of the “acquis communautaire” is legitimate for the citizens of these countries. Is this integration deep or not ? What are the effects of these institutional harmonisations or uniformisations, including the Bologna Process for higher education, of the application to the guidelines, or the implementation of Community programs and in particular the use of the Structural Funds for the objective of convergence ?

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