The European Union in its current form is the result of consensual processes driven fundamentally by national elites pursuing their interests. Elites see the EU as an instrument to achieve goals which could not (or still cannot) be achieved nationally. It is, therefore, not surprising that elites in general are more enthusiastic about the European project and are more likely to identify with the European Union. However, we know very little about the structure of elite’s EU identity. In this paper we systematically compare the dimensions of EU identity of citizens and elites. Based on the 2007 and 2009 survey data gathered under the IntUne project we focus our analysis on three dimensions of EU citizenship: identity, representation and scope. The two time points allow us to compare the situation before the crisis and at the very beginning of it.
