A History of the States’ Europeanness from the EEC/EU Institutions’ Perspective: (Re)considering the Current Relevance of the Institutional Interpretations in Light of the Recent Crises

According to Article 49(1) of the Treaty on the European Union, any State wishing to apply for EU membership must be “European”, a preliminary eligibility condition which has been enshrined in EU law since the Treaty of Rome. Yet, the qualifier “European” has never been explicitly or institutionally defined, despite the fact that it may take on various meanings, going broadly from geographical to cultural ones, including political ones. Failing a clear-cut definition, the EEC/EU institutions have been brought to provide their own interpretations of the requesting States’ European identity – or Europeanness – especially in the course of membership applications, treaty-making processes and enlargement prospects. Focusing on these specific phases, and especially on the membership requests that raised eligibility issues, this paper investigates the various interpretations of the States’ Europeanness that have been provided by the EEC/EU institutions over the last sixty years. The methodological approach relies on a textual and discursive analysis of both recent documents and older records. It then considers, or reconsiders, the current relevance of these interpretations in light of the recent crises that the EU has to handle, such as the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU or the democratic issues in some eastern Member States, and questions the prospective EU (dis)integration based on these institutional interpretations of European identity.