The Role of the EU Education Policy within the Process of European Integration: Old Discourse in a New Battle

Abstract

As the decreasing turnout rates at the European Parliamentary elections and the increasing number of failures in the European referenda lay bare, there is a gap between the Union and the citizens. This indicates a relative underdevelopment of the integration in social and political spheres compared to the fascinating success story in the economy. However, an economically driven process of integration needs and leads changes in these spheres to advance. In the face of a similar challenge, education was given the role of collective identity construction during the battle for national integration. This research focuses on the education policy of the Union. It aims to advance an understanding of whether the education policy is attributed to the role of supporting the process of European integration through the construction of a collective European identity. The relative lack of academic interest in the education policy in the process of European integration makes the conduct of this research timely. The limited competence of the Union and thus the inadequacy of the available data about the education policy form a high barrier to academic research. In order to overcome the barrier, this research adopts an interdisciplinary approach. Following the discourse-historical school, it critically analyses the discourse of the Union on education. The findings underline that the Union has been employing the old discourse of nationalism in a new battle for European integration. Therefore, the role of the education policy is not free from the function of the collective identity construction in the process of European integration.

Asiasanat:education, identity, integration, European integration.