Thinking Civic Education in the European Union Context: Challenges, Limits and Perspectives

In this paper, I will discuss the possibility of conceiving a European civic education. In 2009, the European Economic and Social Committee recommended the EU to introduce a “Common European civic education”. Such proposals somehow remind us the national context. As suggested by a variety of historical and contemporary examples, numerous liberal democracies propose civic education programs. These are supposed, for example, to increase political participation, to raise awareness among citizens about rights and duties, to ensure their loyalty and support and/or to address political integrations challenges. While such programs exist on the national level, I will demonstrate that its pure transposition to the European context – in a way similar to the nation-state – cannot be taken for granted. Some particularities of the EU (to start with its transnational and non-state-based character) challenge the very concept of civic education which is traditionally thought in the framework of the nation-state. This paper will show in what sense this is the case. Based on an analysis of four main issues (purpose, curriculum, legitimacy and way), I will highlight challenges, limits and perspectives of applying civic education to the transnational, diversified and non-state-based EU context. The question of European civic education will be analyzed from the perspective of normative political theory. I will combine works on the European integration with research on the role of schools in the construction of nation-states and on civic education as a political and ethical problem. This paper will thus illustrate how political theory helps to capture the EU political integration process (I). At the same time, it will demonstrate how the study of the EU allows us to further develop theoretical concepts (II).