PROJECT ENDED
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Introduction

Welcome to the first edition of the EURONAT home page! This page strives to be an active member and promoter of the project. It is both a tool to join the members of the project which should promote a degree of coherence among the partner institutions providing them with information and a medium for communication as well as a window through which the results and progress of the project can be accessed.

This project is devoted to the study of European and national identities and the connections between them in nine European states (six EU member states and three associated states in Central and Eastern Europe) from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective. This research has to be seen within the context of European integration studies and the rapidly expanding interest in the development of a European identity as a legitimacy basis of European integration.

The project lies at the crossroads between different research traditions on nations and European integration in political science, sociology, social psychology, cultural studies, history and international relations form which it will be theoretically and methodologically informed. It aims at the analysis and comparison of intertwining European and national identities giving particular attention to the role of Eastern enlargement in this phenomenon. In the case of each state, the relationship between national and European identities is analysed through images, representations, understandings and meanings of Europe and the various nations at the levels of political élites, the media and civil society. In the empirical research, special emphasis is given the role of media as the discursive universe within which national and European identities are formed.

This project has been funded by the European Commission Research DG, in the context of the Key Action of the Fifth Framework Programme 'Improving Human Research Potential and the Socio-Economic Knowledge Base' for the period 2001-2004 (contract no. HPSE-CT2001-00044, proposal no. SERD-2000-00008) and is based at European University Institute's Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies.