Contemporary scholarly debate in Europe focuses on the quality of democracy in the enlarged and changing EU polity. The major question is how to assure that fundamental principles of democracy will be met in a structure which has gone beyond a nation-state. To answer such a question one must concentrate not only on democratic institutions and their functioning but also on the political identity of Europeans and its transformation. The main aim of the proposed paper is to summarise the findings of the research conducted in recent years within the RECON project which pertains to the changes in the collective identification of Europeans after enlargement with a special focus on new member states. The process of changes in national identification and its Europeanisation is ongoing and brings about certain visible and measurable results, and Europe as an ‘imagined community’ is created over time. Secondly, we aim to pose the question how the observed changes and evolving practices in the area of collective identity construction can indicate the changes in the functioning of democracy in Europe. In particular we will conceptualise the relationship between the political community and the democratic polity in Europe in the context of three polity models which refers to three possible ways of solving the question how democracy can be organized within the EU and what the requirements are on the level of political identity (audit democracy model, federal model and regional-European democratic model of a cosmopolitan nature).
