The French Republican model,the European Diversity Perspective and the European Public Sphere

1 The French actors’ interpretation of the diversity perspective

Since 2003, the date of the Amsterdam Treaty, European and national actors, in an attempt to fight against ethnic, racial or religious discrimination, have worked to disseminate the concept of diversity throughout the European territory. The European Directive on Race precedes the European agreement on the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity signed in 2005 (Flauss, 2001; Guiraudon, 2004; Tyson, 2001). Both could go in the same direction and complement each other, or not; everything depends on the instruments used in pursuance of that aim. In October 2009, Luxembourg organized a day entitled ‘For diversity, against discrimination’, linking the two words in the same slogan as if it were taken for granted. But usually it is not, and mainly in the French context. The diversity policy is interpreted in a variety of ways: most of the time it is dissociated from the concept of discrimination. The way to link it to the latter is to associate it with a social concept, in particular with equality of opportunity.

We can say that, globally, we have encountered more positive answers about a diverse society than negative answers: in France, we did not consult the actors from the extreme right, who are against multiculturalism and Islam, but in Germany and in several other countries anti-diversity groups and organizations were interviewed. With the exception of anti-diversity groups, the majority of actors consider the diverse society nowadays to be either an inescapable fact, or as a necessity for society to be possible, or as a goal to achieve, or as a means of achieving another purpose – e.g. creating a more dynamic society, a richer culture, etc. – or some combination of all four. Societies tend to be diverse and are regarded as a source of wealth and an opening onto the global world, even if they are more difficult to govern. The divergences between actors concern mainly the way of governing the different groups constituting the diverse society and the role of the EU and of the nation-state in regulating the diversity of identities, as well as of situations (handicap) and gender. Most of the time, the respondents argue that this matter must be decided by the states themselves without the EU’s interference.

What seems to be specific to France is that the implementation of diversity inside the territory revitalizes the primary secular divide between centralists and regionalists, the so-called Jacobins and Girondins, traditionally opposed on the type of management for the national territory and the sharing of power between centre and regions. This opposition coincides generally with the approach to minority rights throughout the national territory (migrants included). The Girondins (the so-called relativists) have worked to achieve the decentralization process against the resistance of the Jacobins (so-called universalists). For both, there are no acknowledged minorities: there are only citizens from different cultural origins living in territories where administratively divided communes, departments and regions are still more salient than cultural differentiation. The latter is more often called regional differentiation, and relates to a territory divided into administrative regions, according to the recent reforms that occurred in the 1960s and 1980s, following the European directives on territorial cohesion set out in the Treaty of Rome. These divisions do not always correspond to the entire cultural territory of Bretons or Occitans, which often exceeds them. The Girondins led the decentralization process under the presidency of François Mitterrand, in 1981, promoting elected regional assemblies with an autonomous budget to preserve their cultural and linguistic heritage and to decide on local problems. The old democracies of Western Europe followed this process during the same decades: in this way, the European Union implemented multiculturalism and strengthened local democracy through regional reforms. The Treaty of Amsterdam also moved in this direction. A second wave of decentralization and implementation of a specific status for Corsica under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, in 2000–2002, was voted through under the Chirac presidency, with further experimentation on different territories after 2002, under Prime Minister J-P Raffarin. The Jacobins feared the introduction of new attacks on the unitary model, which they felt might produce inequalities of treatment among citizens, but they were obliged to accept it. Between 1990 and 2001, however, we notice a return to a harder Republicanism, stemming from the right and from the left, with different opinions on the diversity issue: the Republicans from both trends saw the former differentialists turning to a neo-differentialism coming from the right, the so-called communitarians from whom they wanted to distance themselves more or less. According to their affiliation, they presented communitarianism as a distortion of the initial view of Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism and wanted to affirm the difference of the French Republican position.

This debate would be strengthened during Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency. The President wanted to put an end to the utopian trend of 1968, which put the minority movements at the forefront until regional reform and the granting of the right of association to migrant minorities in the 1980s. President Sarkozy implemented his own interpretation of the Race Directive and the European diversity and migration policy in a liberal perspective, and shifted interest towards the radical Islamist threat to the Republican model (the anti-burka law). Until that time, the major steps in favour of minority rights had come from the left. Migrant minorities faced the same denial as the cultural and linguistic minorities in France before the 1980s. A new policy granted associative and cultural rights to migrants under François Mitterrand after a famous march for civil rights all over France. This march was a founding event for a whole generation of French citizens of emigrant origin or from the DOM TOM, who founded their cultural associations, free radios, joined SOS Racism and transformed their fight for rights into a fight against discrimination and racism during the 20 years that followed. Many of the former leaders of SOS Racism are present-day leaders of the Socialist Party on the issue of diversity. The activists of this generation led the socio-cultural fight for integration and non-discrimination along the same lines: against the affirmation of rightist trends, which do not associate the concepts of social equality or non-discrimination with the term diversity. The new term ‘visible minority’, which refers implicitly to the Black, Asian or Semitic groups of the population, whether they are French citizens of immigrant origin or not, appeared widely in the French public sphere after 2004, following the publicity on the Race Directive and Diversity Convention. For Nicolas Sarkozy, who was Interior Minister during the 2005 suburban riots, it was now important to make a clear distinction between the population of delinquent youths of immigrant origin and the new emerging elite he began promoting as soon as he was elected, as a strong symbol of a modern France proud of its diversity. This position polarized two visions among Republicans: the first links the social claim for equality and non-discrimination to diversity; the other separates it from the social issue and promotes only diversity as a symbol of modern republicanism, which strives for continuity with the idea of the République as an open and egalitarian model for modest class promotion. Furthermore, the President did not hold up the school teacher as the only emblem of promotion but also the priest, trying to illustrate a new conception of positive ‘laïcité’ (secularism) ³ as agreed with Pope Benedict XVI on his 2008 visit to France, based on a revival of the Catholic faith, as if the previous ‘laïcité’ promoted by free-thinkers was purely negative. The far right has used ‘laïcité’ in its 2012 presidential political program ‘as a value at the heart of the Republican project’ and as a weapon against the ‘Muslim’ – connoted in its discourses as a communitarian attempt to apply sharia law in France.

All these symbolic manipulations reflect the political struggle between the two main political trends within the country, which has been going on since the start of Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency under the label of the Republican model of diversity and ‘laïcité’: a way to affirm distinctions between a leftist and a rightist leadership on the diversity issue and on societal orientations in general. ‘Laïcité’, in the vision of the left, must be social and democratic, according to Jean Jaurès and Aristide Briand, and, like the term diversity, associated with the principle of non-discrimination so as to lead to the equality of all families of thought. In this vision, the ‘laïcité’ principle has legitimacy only if the state is fighting against discrimination at the same time.

These distinctions can also be gathered under the split Girondins/Jacobins. There is a clear-cut line, in both parties interviewed – the UMP pour un Movement Populaire (Union For Popular Movement) and the Socialist Party – between orthodox Republicans, partisans of a return to universalist trends (Jacobins), and the other, still more open to the multiculturalism model (Girondins) but cautious about the risk of evolving towards a new conservative differentialism. The Girondin trend also includes a diversity of Churches – Catholic and Protestant – open to a new status for ‘laïcité’, which allows other religions and free-thinkers to cohabit in the public space while forbidding the wearing of ostentatious signs of their faith (cf. the law on the veil promoted by the Stasi Commission). The debate on ‘laïcité’ has resurfaced in the 2012 presidential campaign in which the socialist candidate proposed to introduce the word ‘laïcité’ in the Constitution to forestall any possibility of further manipulation of the original democratic concept, which establishes a clear line between State and Church in the public affairs of the Republic. This divide between Girondins and Jacobins, attested in both the UMP and the PS, can often be explained by a minority origin (native or migrant) of the respondents, but not always: you can find a hard Republican profile among Corsicans from the left or the right. These two categories refer to a different conception of the nation, namely: as the sum of the cultural differences of the nation’s territories and the cultural differentiation of the members of these territories united in the same nation as citizens (Girondin), or to a conception of the nation that does not take into consideration any dimension other than the fact of belonging to the nation through citizenship (Jacobin).

If we take into account these modes of identity categorization and the way the words support different models of this Republic, we understand why, when interviewing French actors, we encountered some difficulties in applying the categories used in the Eurosphere tools. The categories of the questionnaire (ethno-national diversity, ethno-national groups or minorities, native and immigrant minorities and EU migrants) did not correspond to the French qualification of these groups and were rejected in defining the French diversity perspective. ⁴ We see the word diversity commonly used to underline a plurality of realities. France remains a centralized nation, where the formal recognition of difference tends to be slowly integrated into the everyday landscape, but where the media and the political electoral agenda together with the rightward turn of the populist discourses of the presidential team are reopening the cleavages between the French and the others. Even today, the myth of the French nation, as one and indivisible, is gaining strength. The cultural and linguistic differences stemming from regional origin or from migration can be expressed at an associative level or as options in the education system, but they cannot exist at the national level in order to favour national integration (Favell, 1998). Religious faiths can exist in the private space and coexist peacefully in the public space through the application of the ‘laïcité’ principle and a prohibition on the display of ostentatious signs of religious belonging.

The word ‘ethnic’ is not used to connote ‘minority’. Until recent times, immigration was perceived as a temporary phenomenon. French Republicans therefore now have to face up to long-lasting cultural differentiations inside the national frame. The cultural identities territorialized on the regional level seem to have been taken on board and no longer pose any problem, except in Corsica from time to time, due to the long-lasting prejudices about this area. But citizens of immigrant origin must still wage a continuous fight to be fully recognized and integrated into different economic sectors, including the political sphere. The terms ‘visible minorities’ or ‘people coming from diversity’ are newly diffused in public space and medias.

That is why, for the Republican common background, many nuances, linked to diversity-policy implementation, are noticeable among the different actors described above when dealing with the question of minority and voting rights: most of the respondents conclude that these rights must be ruled on by the national state and not by the European Union because they are strongly dependent on the specificity of each national context. In this way, the French position is no different from that of the other countries evolving towards a more statist model (Van de Beek & Vermeulen, 2010). ⁵ They are more willing to delegate to the European Union the problems of migrants, of citizenship and of asylum rights they wish to see harmonized at the European level. An important distinction divides the different minorities’ claims as well. For the native minorities, it is more important to be recognized as different within the national territory and to have a more or less cultural and legislative autonomy. For the migrant minorities with or without French citizenship, the main problem is first to gain better integration and/or recognition as a full citizen and, possibly in second place, as a member of another culture or another faith inside the Republic: since 2005 the two attitudes coexist among citizens from immigrant backgrounds or ‘from diversity’. The women’s issue or more generally the gender issue is included within the diversity perspective, as is the issue of disability. Only a few respondents consider that half of humanity (women) cannot be included in the definition of diversity policy because they cannot be considered as a minority. In terms of these very general distinctions, we can describe more easily the position of our sample of respondents as follows: for one respondent from the advocacy think-tank, the CERI – a fairly influential research centre – it is difficult to compare the effect of the diversity issue from one context to another, due to the historic dimension. The social imperative is prominent too but the migrant issue seems to be the major concern (two of the researchers questioned are specialists in the field of migration and diaspora). Two big problems must be resolved: the better integration in French society of the third- and fourth-generation descendants of immigrants, French citizens who feel discriminated against; and the re-evaluation of the representation of the migrant status, which should be considered in a more positive manner and not negatively as elsewhere in Europe. The migrant contribution to the common welfare through the labour market should be evaluated in a positive light, as the Anglo-Saxons in the New World usually do. The role of European directives in this process seems very important in sustaining such a state policy. The role of Halde (Haute Autorité de Lutte contre les Discriminations et pour l’Egalité), an agency created in 2000 by Europe to fight discrimination at the national level, is seen as a significant step in this direction.

Unfortunately since then, we can see that the rhetoric adopted by the major parties in power in Europe, and in France in particular, has not followed this line and continues to perpetuate a widely different idea of migration in order to pander to a certain part of the electorate anchored on the far right. There is, however, in France often some distance between the rhetoric heard in the media, which seems more conservative, and the democratic dynamic that one meets on the ground (Vincent, 2011).

For the Montaigne Institute, which played an active role in advising the Sarkozy presidency on this particular issue, the priority is to promote the idea of diversity in economic structures. This institute is at the centre of the Charter for Diversity campaign and the manifesto it has put together in order to bring about a necessary change in leaders’ attitudes. It targets the big firms that need, for their short- and long-term development, more qualified people of all origins and must use their potential to be competitive on a global scale in the future. The organization of pressure groups to force the state to promote a more active policy is suggested: the visible minorities belonging to the young, educated elites are the main target group for such actions. They are encouraged to re-evaluate claims to their rights at all levels of society (employment, lodging, access to higher studies, school for the second chance, etc.). The idea is that following the strong lead given by the state, civil society should take over as soon as possible.

For another think-tank, Confrontation Europe, the urgency is to operate a Copernican Revolution to ‘Europeanize’ the French at all levels of their territories, and to make them aware that Europe does a great deal for French citizens’ welfare and that they must acknowledge this by building a common European identity and fighting for a democracy that goes deeper within the European institutions. Positive discrimination seems necessary to arrive at more equality. A stronger involvement in the diversity issue is conceived as a priority for democratizing the European and national landscapes. Its action is directed towards citizens as a priority as well as towards national and European institutions, providing information about Europe all over France and strengthening interaction between the EU and its citizens.

The media have three main positions. They consider the great change between the different waves of migrants since the 1970s; they see a different dynamic during the past 30 years, and they agree that these new waves pose new questions that the Republic is not used to answering easily. Some media think everything will come right through the spontaneous workings of history and the market, while others think, on the contrary, that the state and the private sector must assist the process through taking appropriate measures. The third position is that the state must provide the main changes in order to make the transition from immigration easier for the younger generations, who want to be fully integrated in the labour market and are ready to accept positive discrimination or positive action. All agree that the Republican model has proved itself throughout history and they agree to resist the diverse pressures to change it. Most media have strong nationalist views and do not have many links with Europe and European media, and don’t believe in having them either. They pay little attention to European news in their programmes and publications.

As for the political parties, the two main parties think they have pretty much solved the native minority problems by taking different measures: the law on decentralization and regionalization, the voting in of the European Charter on Regional Languages, which in France took place in 2008, and the application of the subsidiarity principle. Concerning migrants, some respondents belonging to the UMP’s old elite think the country has failed to integrate the third and fourth generations of Muslim migrants. They do not seem very confident in the capacity to overcome this problem if a fairly important change in the mentality of the country and in the representation process does not occur. Some very big investments are required in the policy concerning the deprived suburbs, investments which are difficult to achieve in a period of economic crisis. PS (Parti Socialiste) representatives express a feeling of urgency with regard to renewing the electoral body by opening up the party to new candidates from diversity and to the young in general: the only way to do this is to forbid the addition of mandates, which burden the candidates. This habit is well established in political and administrative practices and is quite difficult to eradicate if it is not accepted by the entire electoral body. (It was inscribed in their presidential campaign platform for the 2012 election.)

By contrast, the political parties’ young elites who are members of ‘visible minorities’ are much more optimistic. For them, the European policy was the signal they needed in order to mobilize and claim their rights for better political representation by creating pressure groups to reach this goal in France. The Black organization called the CRAN (Representative Council for Black Associations) is one of them. They were helped by the presidential team’s policy in support of diversity politics, which was introduced during the 2007 electoral campaign and implemented by the arrival in government of three women from a ‘diversity’ background. Advised by the Montaigne Institute think-thank, which has had close links to the biggest French and transnational firms, increasingly aware of the necessity to employ a well-trained workforce in the near future in order to maintain their competitive edge, the Sarkozy government created the emblematic post of Commissar for Diversity and Equality of Opportunities, whose role was to propose positive measures for dealing with this problem. However, this courageous step upset the canons of strict orthodox Republicanism within the presidential team as well as within the left. Its emphasis on immigration and national identity, and the stigmatization of young people from the poor suburbs, have been a problem for the old elite close to former President Chirac and to the Republican left. This evolution in favour of a more restrictive immigration policy destroyed symbolically the previous positive measures in favour of diversity. Republicans on both the left and the right have hardened their positions since the new right-wing populist parties gained the advantage on migration, a terrain that had been occupied by the parties of the left since the 1980s. The Constitutional Court, which brings together people from the right and the left, handed down a negative ruling on the request to use the word diversity in the preamble to the Constitution in 2008, and the majority of state authorities concerned with the statistical measurement of discrimination (INSEE, INED, Halde) have also taken a controversial stance towards the necessity for collecting statistics about ethnic origins in order to evaluate and measure the phenomenon of discrimination in France, requested by the New Commissar for Equality of Opportunities.

The UMP elites have therefore been obliged to modify their strategies slightly in order to conform more closely to the orthodox Republican canon. What are the requirements of this Republican orthodoxy? The main ones derive from the long practice and experience of political deviational drifts since the Second World War. For these, the crucial point is to associate the ethno-national or ethnic group/category with the social criteria in defining what diversity is in France and to clearly postulate equality of opportunity as the desired aim. The Republican rhetoric has usually concentrated on the problem of social inequality. Republicans agree that social actors with an immigrant background, whatever their colour, are the actors most exposed to discrimination in large urban societies, that the geographical and territorial criteria of the centre/periphery determine the actual segregation of the different ethnic populations and that this poses a crucial problem for the building of a harmonious society. Republicans are conscious of the need to rely on the universality of values on which the model is based and that the main concern is now to reduce the distance between the real inequality and the model. They also think that nation-building is an ongoing process which citizens have to work on in their everyday life through their free adoption of its universal values, and that it is not done in a single step. Regionalist parties of the islands and overseas territories share the same values although from a Girondin point of view, since they want more autonomy for themselves and their territory whilst believing in the principles underlying the philosophy of the Republican model, which grants the same rights to all citizens. Except for the Corsicans seeking independence, who are more critical of this model, the moderate autonomists are true Republicans who want a more open society, even if, in their own region, they keep the migrant minority at a distance so as to avoid conflicts and to concentrate on their own future. This territory being poor and dependent on the Republic for its survival, its members feel threatened by the liberalization of the economy and demand protection and redistribution from the state but not independence.

What is certain is that the European directives have greatly furthered the claim for promotion and respect of diversity in each of the European countries and have shown that the problem will not be solved only by the existing strategy dreamt up in France at the end of the 1990s to support the fight against discrimination at the level of the associations and of the local and regional authorities. Promoting diversity becomes a global and ponderous social and political task, which must be inspired and implemented by the state at the same time as the prevention of discrimination because this promotion itself is facing many problems linked to hidden and secular discrimination. This concerns the public as well as the private sectors, all domains included, such as those dealing with the workforce, housing, health, culture, politics and education. It is as though the implementation of the concept of diversity within the institutions was thoroughly disturbing the (closed) way in which society has been working for decades. It exacerbates the political divide over the idea of the nation between the two main parties and within the parties themselves. Even though the Republicans appear to be gathered under the same banner, there are implicitly different conceptions of the French nation within the parties. Our respondents have made it explicit. While France has always been considered more a ‘civic’ nation than an ethnic nation, we can say that, in all nations, there is a part of the ethnic and civic discourse which differs according to partisan discourses and periods of history. We can say today that the more civic conception is shared by the liberal Republicans on the left and right, and the more ethnic conception is clearly appropriated by all the nuances of the right-wing to extreme-right-wing parties, the left not being exempt from the ethnicization or discrimination process either, although it may concern more the old elements within the party.

Those Jacobin and Girondin reflexes on the left and on the part of some of the liberal right are founded on the idea of the French nation as the keeper, and the federative, educative and protective nation, which has grown in opposition to an ethno-national concept of the nation founded on the criteria of belonging. This concept becomes more and more relevant with the crisis, which puts emphasis on regulation by the state for more social redistribution and sees the rise of a populist right all over Europe, clearly reaffirming its ethno-national identity against the Islamic danger, following the idea of the Clash of Civilizations. To fight this trend, the identity of a France based on universalism, equality and social protection is proposed as a version of solidarity, which needs to be constantly reaffirmed and actualized. The strength of its project for the Republicans is that the republic relies on adhesion to its concept and on an understanding of the implications of its values (‘laïcité’, for instance); the French identity cannot be imposed but must always be built and rebuilt through respect for people and for commitments, through temporary opposition to a concept of identity formatted by the state and through the ongoing resistance of citizens to the shrinking of the state’s efforts on behalf of social redistribution (quoted by the left during the debate on national identity promoted in the public sphere by the Ministry of National Identity, Emigration and Co-development). We can also find some of the militants from the liberal right close to this orthodox Republican model: the young elites from the visible minorities in the UMP do not have another discourse and stick to the social reality of ethnic discrimination. However, the absorption of the extreme right by the UMP for the presidential campaign in 2007, and now the hardening of this line during the 2012 presidential campaign, have maintained the confusion and raised the left’s unbroken suspicion of the right. The new rise of the extreme-right party during the regional elections in 2010, and further now, and the debate on national identity that took place in 2011, which brought to light the political deviationist drifts, have added more confusion to the situation.

Patrick Weil, in his book La France et Ses Etrangers: L’aventure d’une politique de l’immigration (1991) says that the legitimacy of the high authority – the Constitutional Court – highlights the difficulty that political actors have in defining for themselves the Republican rules of action in the domain of diversity. In his opinion, ‘it is not a sign of good health for the values it contributes to reaffirm’.

Twenty years later, we see how the policy of ‘diversity’, leading to or accompanied by the prevention of discrimination, is mobilizing key actors from all parties in the economic and political landscape to contribute to the modernization of archaic economic and mental blueprints in the country. But a significant change is made rather difficult by the trends and the countertrends that are opposing each other and leading to the strengthening of the orthodox Republicans – Jacobins hostile to multiculturalism – to the detriment of the multiculturalist Girondins.

The recent book by Jean-Loup Amselle, L’Ethnicisation de la France (2011), attests that the same problematic exists today with deeper questions. The way the progressistes or Girondins present their claim for recognition is perceived by the universalists as ethnicizing those who are discriminated against, and focusing more on their origin than on their belonging to a nation as citizens. The author points to the paradox that the Republicans who do not want a communitarian society seem to provoke it by the way they address their recognition, recalling that universalism means mainly recognition of the equality of all citizens and not the essentialization of the identity of the other. But the recognition of equality will remain an abstract issue if effective measures or means are not taken to maintain or re-establish it.

The respondents from the NGOs and SMOs (social movements) could be rallied under this banner. The respondents interviewed were members of the SMO Ni Putes ni Soumises (Neither Whores nor Submissive), mainly oriented towards the defence of migrant women, FASTI, ⁶ an old, large and experienced organization for the defence of immigrants’ rights in France, and a Corsican regional movement including, in reality, three different movements under the Corsican banner – Pour la Corse, STC (Union of Corsican Workers) and AVA BASTA (an anti-racist movement). The broad social movement which arose in Guadeloupe during this period was also scrutinized.

2 Implementation of instruments and methods in civil society and state organizations in favour of diversity

For the sceptics, this new policy might bypass the juridical instruments that were meant to halt discrimination, and it tends to mask rather than to resolve any kind of obvious or insidious racism. Surfing on populism is gaining ground all over Europe, and mostly against Muslim radical groups. In a way, the racial question has been turned upside down and reintroduced into the public debate via the diversity issue. Formerly, regional minorities and migrant minorities were treated differently. Now, with the diversity perspective, they both relate to diversity policy even if the focus is more on migrant groups.

Some actors (some UMP) complain about the blindness displayed by French society to all attempts at measuring the degree of discrimination (colour included), and insist that such tools need to be created. They use the US example as an argument. When US policymakers created laws to prohibit racial discrimination in employment, they quickly perceived that enforcement required categorizing Americans on the basis of racial distinctions. It showed the interaction of racial categories for civil rights with those used for the census. There was an evolution of the racial question from cultural assumptions to a political process through the creation of racial categories that could be used in different domains of state regulation: government-funded science, civil-rights enforcement, a process driven by the administration and by political forces from the 1940s up to now. It is more or less the same process that the EU tends to enforce in the European countries. In France, the translation of this state of juridical enforcement could be read in the policy of the new President in favour of positive discrimination and his decision to introduce instruments to measure the phenomena of discrimination inside the French state apparatus, in an attempt to end this voluntary ‘blindness policy’ conducted since the 1960s as a consequence of the Second World War.

Since 2007, the debate on ethnic statistics, which is not new in France, has thus re-emerged on the French political agenda on discrimination after the appointment of the Commissar for Diversity and Equality of Opportunities in 2010. This debate reveals once again the two antagonistic philosophical positions of the anti-racist movement in France: the universalist versus the multiculturalist, which convey two very different understandings of society. In practice, this is more a debate about two political positionings (Fassin & Fassin, 2009).

The debate, which concerns essentially the state and its apparatus in the form of the Institute of National Demography, in charge of demographic statistics, and which reveals the state of the racial issue in France, is not closed. It continues between the partisans of the creation of these instruments (the government team) and those who are against it (the universalists). A compromise seemed to have been found in 2008, which consisted in legitimizing the use of statistical data when their collection corresponded to precise and temporary goals useful for society – in pharmaceutical or medical domains, in marketing specific cultural demands, in calculating the number of ethnic minorities in prison – whilst remaining prohibited for other uses. In any case, the ‘use’ of ethnic statistics may correspond to political and historical conditions, but the risk always remains that their use could be distorted. What is important is that scientific production and political measures should go in the direction of society’s wishes, if there is a social demand to have a better representation of itself, proposed Michel Wieviorka (2008).

The problem is that many different social actors disagree on this way of dealing with diversity policy. A watchdog group of intellectuals has been formed to look into the question. It also seems that the actors themselves, poor citizens from popular districts, refuse strongly to be identified as visible minorities stemming from diversity, considering it more as a tool for stigmatization than a tool to improve the situation.

So, in the construction of discourses on diversity, we have a paradoxical situation in the sense that we see an inversion of roles between state and organizations. At present, it is the French state that is trying to impose a discourse and an approach to social discrimination and social problems in the popular districts by making reference to ethno-national diversity (ethnic statistics, etc.). In reaction to this, the associations resist using ethnic references to treat discrimination, migration or other social issues related to diversity in general. They fear an instrumentalization of the diversity issue and the stigmatization of people ‘stemming from diversity’. The state is supposed to fight against the increasing tide of communitarianism and social exclusion but it is accused of promoting it indirectly (as a perverse effect of its policy). The discourse characterizing the state as concerned with the preservation of diversity is viewed as hypocritical and in contradiction to its role of integrating problematic populations and ensuring the equality of each individual. The SMOs such as FASTI or Ni Putes ni Soumises, which support people of immigrant origin, say that they do not want those from the popular districts to be treated differently. On the contrary, according to these sources, the solution to their problem would be to obtain the same treatment for all. Positive discrimination is taken into consideration only through the ethnic dimension, but in the poor suburbs there are not only black people, there are also French. For the suburban population, the only chance for equality to work is by investing in schools and education (a major cause espoused by all candidates during the 2012 campaign). Positive discrimination is only a small part of the whole process. The Republican model of equal treatment of each individual allows the manifestation of diversity. Diversity is increasingly presented today by institutions and social actors from the left (SP) to the right (the President of the City of Immigration [UMP]) as something inherent from the outset to French nation-building and to France as a country of immigration. But organizations such as FASTI consider that, by the new regulation on migration, the state is accentuating the differences and even skin colour in order to create an atmosphere of insecurity and to legitimize the hardening of its control. The Ministry of National Identity, Integration and Co-development, inaugurated in November 2009, was accused by diverse opposition forces of transforming the integration policies into tools of repression and assimilation. Imposing the learning of the French language on migrants, for example, can be an integration tool, and most of the time it is recognized as such. But it can also become a method of repression if the host or departure societies do not provide the necessary tools to promote this learning. In France today, the needs are not covered; too few services are provided because of the reduction in subsidies.

These organizations all agreed that the present government conducts a regressive policy while claiming to be strongly in favour of diversity, focusing more on the symbolic promotion of the elite stemming from diversity than on the working class, the young and migrants. The risk of the instrumentalization of diversity by religious fundamentalism or by politics is also stressed. Diversity is considered first of all as an everyday social experience depending on different social contexts, which escapes political control and state intervention. Positive discrimination as well as male/female parity seem necessary to correct some obstacles to equality and some injustices which exist in society. The first answer regarding minority rights is a unanimous ‘No’ to positive discrimination but ‘Yes’ to equal opportunities for everyone. The only minority seen as acceptable for receiving specific rights are the handicapped.

Views are shared on concrete strategies to fight against discrimination; quotas, anonymous CVs or parity policies are preferred, but still, none of these actions are considered to be real solutions, but are seen more as facilitation measures. The main issue concerning diversity is equality and not claiming some special status (religious or ethnic for example) in the name of diversity. Consequently, education and mass communication are considered as primordial for obtaining gender equality.

We see how different are the positions of the elites questioned about this issue, who accept the diversity perspective as a new imperative proposed by the European Union granted to deepen the democratic perspective with the new Charter of Fundamental Rights. This charter tends to make Europe into a territory where the fight against different types of discrimination should be engaged within the governing European teams, to strengthen the discussion on democratization and harmonization of structures and to face the challenges posed by the diverse immigration flows from all cultures and all living standards.

So, the phenomenon of the collective introspection of the different levels of institutional and organizational power concerning diversity, which started in the last 5 years, seems to raise many new problems. French society is not altogether prepared to solve them, but the imposition of this new norm of diversity recognition has the merit of challenging the social and political reality of the citizens and of their political structures. It disrupts an order that has not been questioned since the end of the Second World War, after which the lessons learned were put into practice. The penal and juridical aspects are only part of the process. They raise new questions and highlight the need for new strategies. The question of the veil is one of the primary issues which appeared in the press and in the French debate on the preservation of ‘laïcité’ in the national public sphere. But there are many others.

The recruitment strategies of public and private firms are today the focus of anti-discrimination ‘militants’. Louis Schweitzer, the president of Halde, seemed to be facing some difficulties from firms dissatisfied with his intrusion into their internal policies. He was replaced in April 2010 by a young jurist proposed by the UMP, who joined the presidential team in November. The latter kept silent on the circular of August 2010 from the Interior Ministery on the expulsion of the Roma, judged discriminatory by numerous NGOs, the European Commission and the United Nations, and finally cancelled by the State Council. The Halde was in the end dissolved by the law of 15 March 2011 and replaced by the Defender of Rights, formed from three authorities active in the fight against discrimination, promotion of equality, defence of children’s rights, deontology of security, security of health care and mediation with public services. This change led to a loss of visibility and independence for this new institution, compared to the Halde, which had created an important awareness of the discrimination problem in its 6 years of existence. Important mediatization, an increasing number of complaints, from 4058 in 2005 to 12467 in 2010, criticism of diversity in administrations and firms had produced a clear demonstration of the necessity to open up French society, which maintains a high degree of inequality. Nevertheless, no means of action were attributed to this office. Less violent but more widespread discrimination, such as the unequal salaries earned by men/women and immigrant descendants, differential employment prospects, inequality in public policies, modification of school catchment areas, decrease in aid allocated to the poorest families, etc., have penalized, in recent years, the less-favoured social groups, who are at the same time victims of discrimination.

We can add that the diversity challenges have caused, and even accelerated, the return of the colonial question and its heritage in terms of workforce integration in the labour market. Racial discrimination still exists ‘towards’ French citizens born of immigrants from post-colonial countries, or even closer, from the integrated overseas territories such as the Caribbean Islands. It is still impossible to talk openly about this unacknowledged issue. The racial question has re-emerged, driven by the combination of two factors: the election of Barack Obama to the US presidency in 2008 and the rise of the Black question in France. The emergence of these questions coincides with the ratification of the European Race Directive in 2004 and with the 2005 riots in the Paris suburbs. A young black entrepreneur, leader of various liberal organizations for the promotion of Black elites in France, said openly that the EU has encouraged him to organize on this level himself. The CRAN too emerged as a Black organization during these years, and with a fairly restricted audience. Its project to be present during the 2012 presidential campaign seems to have failed, however. In 2009, the hotspot of social and ethno-national or regional conflicts temporarily shifted from Corsica to the Caribbean Islands, Guadeloupe at first, where a sustained social conflict arose in the spring, recalling all the socio-political battles stemming from the 1968 claim for recognition then led by Aimé Césaire (the famous emblematic writer fighting for Black recognition), within an economic protest against high living costs. Césaire explicitly posed the racial and political questions of ‘negritude’, not long after the emergence of Martin Luther King. The question raised in this new conflict was defined in terms of the neo-colonial power of the ‘white béké’, which was barely affected by the financial crisis, exploiting the ‘poor black’ population. A similar conflict arose in Corsica 20 years ago over the issue of the cost of living and the monopoly of transport, but it was not posed in the same terms. The global context too was different. The importance of the 2009 mobilization, redoubled for the regional election in 2010, lay in the opportunity for the two major political forces to confront each other over the territorial management of the nation, and the overseas territories in particular. The UMP tried every strategy to attract the Guadeloupean vote in the diaspora and the island, but without success. All measures taken in favour of cheaper overseas travel to encourage family links have been reduced or suppressed since 1993. The promotion of Caribbean elites inside the state administration or the political parties is increasing very slowly under the impetus of the diversity directive, even if the decentralization process initiated in 1981 has opened the way for the principle of difference. This has been actively debated in the 2012 presidential campaign as a key point in favour of diversity (parity included) within the parties and to renew the frameworks of French politics. Another example shows that the political battle is still going strong over possible deviation from the Republican model.

The Minister for Overseas Territories, who came from Guadeloupe, was accused by the left of promoting communitarianism when she said: ‘I want to help the population in Guadeloupe’. The left used this as a pretext to accuse the right of deviation from the Republican universalist conception of the citizen, and of hiding social problems to benefit the ethnic concept. The re-emergence of the Black question and the emblem of liberation that Barack Obama embodies overlie all these battles, which are underscored by deep competition within the globalization process over the repositioning of spheres of influence in the Caribbean zone: France is far away, and its efforts to keep these islands within its territorial domains depends on the attractiveness of its model of integration (social insurance, social security, etc.). With the financial crisis, the time is not so much ripe for autonomy as for more solidarity. Thus the diversity strategy is influenced by all these macro-economic and national factors at once, proof that the stakes underlying this issue are not simple. Guadeloupe voted for the left. Only Guyana and Reunion Island voted for the UMP camp because of divisions on the left. In Corsica, on the contrary, the score of the moderate nationalist candidates (23%) rose to an historic high (the more radical reached only 9%), obliging the winning left to enter an alliance with them in order to govern the region, whilst the UMP lost the elections. The dissatisfaction with the two main parties is linked to the economic situation and to their inability to improve it in the Corsican context: in this case, the diversity perspective is oriented more towards Corsicans as a minority than to the ‘visible minorities’.

So, after 5 years in power, the new ‘Bonapartist’ figure which the former French president has embodied, as a key actor in the transformation process for the representation of diversity, is much more focused on the regulation of migratory flows, notably clandestine migration, than on diversity. The resistance he found within his own political ranks and in the opposition reflects the strength of the Republican model, of which the diverse political forces, even the far right, reassert firmly, today, the universalist values of equality and justice, in the face of what is seen as a liberal turn of the model in favour of the upper classes. The populist/patriotic direction the 2012 presidential campaign has taken shows that the financial crisis is making room once more for the ideal of equality and the fight against social poverty and exclusion. But for ‘French citizens’ first, if not only, including those who are French of immigrant origin or diversity (as the National Front expressed itself during the presidential campaign).

Although the Socialist Party can also hide a certain ‘immobilist’ trend in this matter and a great fear that any change will destroy the model, all the previous developments allow us to understand the political fight behind the word diversity. This word seems to admit of different political models. The European promotion of diversity and the Race Directive are bringing new challenges into the French national public sphere. And, in spite of these contradictory trends, they have created a positive challenge to the French Republican model and are forcing the main national actors to position their political strategy in a concrete way. They can no longer ignore that society has changed because concerned citizens can now find mediators to address their claims in defence of their rights at the interface of national and European power. The creation of the Halde was also the signal for state and political organizations of all orientations to lead a process of self-reflection on the hidden or ignored practices of discrimination mirrored in the new citizen organizations supported by the European institutions with a view to promoting a new collective ethic.

3 The European democratic public sphere or national Europeanized public sphere?

The national public sphere, as an empirical phenomenon, consists essentially of individual citizens, civil society and party systems, media, and state institutions. The European Public Sphere contains, in addition to the above-mentioned components, a transnational civil society (a set of trans-European networks of civil society organizations), European party federations and the European level of intergovernmental and supranational bodies. Before the European Union even existed, there had been a considerable horizontal transnational integration through cooperation between different nation-level organizations in Europe. The Eurosphere research shows that this process of building a horizontal European civil society, without the involvement of the European Union, is still going on (Creutz-Kampi et al., 2011; Sicakkan 2012a; Van de Beek, Vermeulen & Lagerspetz, 2011). The development of the European Union as a transnational political system within Europe has resulted in a middle layer of civil society (trans-European networks of civil-society organizations), European party federations as well as transnational party alliances in the European Parliament. That is, the civil society of the European Public Sphere has taken a multi-level form just like the political system of the European Union, following the sovereignty and power patterns between local, national and European-level power centres. The developments leading to a transnational middle-layer civil society in the emerging European Public Sphere have been initiated by the European Union itself through financial support to networks of civil-society organizations as a consequence of policies to improve communication, civil dialogue and citizen involvement, all of which were devised to increase the democratic legitimacy of the European Union. However, the Eurosphere results show that national-level civil-society organizations are involved in these EU-initiated transnational networks to an insufficient degree. Furthermore, there are important differences between the views, stances and discourses of the national-level organizations and the central leaderships of the trans-European networks. These discrepancies concern especially notions of diversity, the future of the European Union, and the development of the European Public Sphere. Within this general picture, France provides specific sorts of misalignment with what we observe of objectives and discourses at the trans-European civil-society network level.

The political culture and reception of the word ‘diversity’ is understood mainly within the national codes, political culture and history of each nation-state. As a post-imperial power, having recently renounced its colonial path without having yet taken the time to think meaningfully about this experience, France, with its populations scattered across the remnants of its imperial past, is reacting in a specific way. It never ceases inventing new institutional adaptations and new ways of governing its various territories in an attempt to retain its influence, but relies mainly on its French Republican model, reaffirmed despite some stiffness and difficulties in adapting to the present global situation. Assimilation and dissolution in the Republican body, which are generally not positively evaluated in other national contexts or in the context of the transnational civil society, are still on the agenda, even if the results are not very conclusive (Simon, 2000). Some data show that immigrants have a higher rate of unemployment and failure at school and live concentrated in ethnic ghettos, while a new elite and middle class is emerging, silently but surely, from diversity (Vincent, 2011). But tolerance and economic integration of people stemming from diversity have now settled at the heart of civic debates and, with them, the necessity to invent a way of ‘living together’ in accordance with the democratic principles which founded the model and to avoid holding ‘the other’ responsible for the crisis and the increasing feeling of uncertainty (Klossa & Jamet, 2011).

Interestingly, the debate underway in France seems to be entirely and exclusively national, even though in reality it was prompted by the European Union. In addition, the main actors – French MEPs, former government ministers – are well aware of the important role played in this matter by the European power. Even if it is normal political practice, politicians in France appear to be responding to a local issue when they are actually applying a European directive. They believe they are participating at the highest level in the building of Europe through vertical power more than through the European party networks. Party leaders seem only to be starting the European process of linking up. In contrast, the other actors – members of major national parties, media, think-tanks – are far behind: the role of Europe is minimized in their ranks for lack of financial means, time and logistics. They seem to be adapting the imposed norms but without reflecting on the process. These norms essentially include the idea of strengthening and legitimizing ethno-national and other minority identities vis-a-vis the majority identities, resulting in a new notion of who are the legitimate participants in the public sphere. This new notion of legitimacy prescribes that inhabitants of Europe can participate in the public sphere with their own preferred identities, as they are, including the right to promote particularistic rights for the diversity groups they belong to. However, the think-tanks, NGOs, parties and the media still have the impression they can continue as before, with the French state maintaining the initiative. Only the MEPs and the major parties’ representatives coming from minority backgrounds seem to have a clearer picture of the way the European Public Sphere is building and acting in favour of minorities. Few of the respondents were explicitly conscious of the implications of the Lisbon Treaty in matters of sovereignty and fundamental rights; they expressed their opinions as if nothing had changed in the relationship to the European Union. They show clearly that they want to hold on to the initiative. In this process, words are very important in French culture. One respondent said significantly: ‘We avoid certain words because we know they can be sources of conflict; the fight for words is a fight for models of society.’ The strong resistance with which the French Republicans oppose all attempts at spreading the Anglo-Saxon multicultural model in France, in particular, is explicitly described as the fruit of their experience of the Second World War, still very much present in people’s memories. The creed is: ‘A more socially oriented model which keeps ethnic and social claims together can prevent populist derailments.’ In maintaining their political categories, the French actors have the impression they are keeping the French exception alive.

The imposition in France of some ethno-national categories, recognized by the majority of European countries and inspired by the Anglo-Saxon model, seems not to be possible as such, either for the Republican elites, or for the new visible-minority elites themselves. The latter have understood that their integration will occur via an internalized adaptation of the French Republican model, with respect to the social requirement to think about ethnicity and social issues in combination. The former Commissar for Diversity and Equality of Opportunities himself illustrates this position: ‘France must remain that country which allows individuals to achieve the aspirations everyone has, including the possibility of being different, without recognizing any community other than the Republican one.’ What seems increasingly evident is that, to be coherent in its discourse, respect for the universalist principles of freedom, equality and fraternity within French democracy should permit itself a major rethink. While the Commissar did not specify his thoughts more precisely, another UMP member evoked the cost of urban restructuring, of housing, not to mention catering for the crucial needs of state schools facing ever-increasing demands for education, eradication of violence in the suburbs, unemployment, etc., all hard to satisfy in a period of crisis and of financial austerity.

We can formulate the hypothesis that the diversity issue is accelerating the post-colonial tensions between France and its previous colonies by accentuating the need for the status of French citizens of immigrant origin within French society to evolve and the further need for deep, reflexive and ideological changes in order to face the future.

Apart from the links regional minorities have built within the European minority groups through the European Free Alliance, gathering regionalist parties since 1981, ⁷ where Bretons and Corsicans took the lead, the transnational ties that France has inherited from its colonial past lead it more naturally to have privileged structural links with the South and the global sphere that contains all its overseas territories than with Europe. The promotion of the Mediterranean Union during the French presidency of the EU strongly reveals this French tropism. We can certainly see the same thing with Germany, which tends to look more strongly towards its Eastern neighbours with whom its proximity is greater in terms of national and/or ethnic categories as well. We must recall the historical differences involved in building the nations of Europe: a nation built around a cultural community (the German ‘kultur nazione’ and a majority of the Eastern countries) and a nation built around the State (the French civic nation and most of the Western countries), which operates still in Europe (Dressler, 1999). According to some respondents, the Eastern European countries carried out their integration quite successfully within a short time, probably because their models were closer to each other (as the dominant ethnic model, strengthened during the communist experience, had based itself on the German model). The end of the communist bloc created a significant problem for the Republicans from the left, as it terminated their privileged dialogue with the Marxist camp. The UMP, on the other hand, has reinforced its old links with some countries, such as Hungary and Poland. These facts explain some specificities of the French mental map of the European Public Sphere, the big holes in it, and the filter the French apply to other ways of categorizing the world than theirs. We see, through the description of the present context, that orthodox Republicans from the left and from the right try to maintain as long as they can the civic conception of the nation against the ethnic conception, which tends to promote the far right under cover of a new Republican discourse.

Dissatisfied with the way the European Union is developing, most of the respondents offered some concrete and interesting ideas, projecting their democratic wishes and hopes for a new European power. Most of these respondents belonged to the Girondin or multiculturalist trend, because Europe could then become for them a counter-power to the universalist orthodox Republican trends, and thus strengthen their position on the French political scene. The proposed ideas show a strong desire to exchange experiences of the European Public Sphere, expressed through descriptions of respondents’ own deficiencies, asking for more linguistic and institutional training, more organizational power and more support for setting up concrete networks. All respondents say that the European Union must be more active on this level if it wants to create a more effective public sphere. Today, the strength of the global attraction fostered by the digital revolution is such that it is impossible to think the European Union could create a strong European Public Sphere without a greater impetus to intensify the flows of communication within the European territory. Europe is one continent among others. And it is unthinkable to limit the freedom of links created by the Internet to a territorially bounded space.

The main incentive for creating a true European public space, according to some respondents, is to strengthen the political institutional space. For French actors nowadays, the emphasis must be on the necessity to give a new political impulsion to European institutions. One of the main representatives of France in Europe, Michel Barnier, former Foreign Affairs Minister affiliated to the UMP and European Commissar in charge of internal commerce and services, illustrates this inclination to feed the political flame lit by the former French European Presidency (18 march 2010) in the newspaper Le Monde:

It is time to make appointments to create a political Europe. The crisis shows us how crucial it is to consolidate the unique market, to coordinate our economic and financial policies, to place the economy at the service of people and to amplify the voice of Europe in the world to act for peace, development and security. It implies sharing our geopolitical analysis, our strategies, and placing our resources in common, not to explode as happened during the Iraq war. As a member of the Wesendorp group, in charge of preparing the Amsterdam Treaty, and a member of the Presidium of the Convention which is writing the European Constitution and from which the Lisbon Treaty stemmed, I make a claim for a European diplomacy, which would give Brussels the opportunity to become a Common House of European diplomacy: the moment has come, at least with our first female Minister of European Foreign Affairs, to succeed as a global actor, and not only as a regional power under the influence of other global powers; we need the help of all national ministers to start successfully, as her mission shows the difficulty of the task. [author’s translation]

A political Europe implies not only diplomacy but a consensus on a model of society as well. It implies the creation of a political debate on the model of society each country wants: this is directly linked to the discussion about the risk of political derailments and the re-emergence of the political enemy within, as shown by the debate on national identity organized by the French government, which encouraged the anti-Muslim trend through the burka debate and the Swiss anti-minaret vote. This trend does not seem to be isolated. All over Europe, rightist populist trends are reappearing, with the ethnicization of identity and the denouncing of Islam and multiculturalism, and with the exclusion of the other. Inspired by Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’, no longer focused on slogans from the past forbidden by the European directives against racism and anti-semitism, the common enemy becomes Islam. Most of the time the media put moderate Muslims in the same category as the radicals. The Swiss vote on minarets inspired many other European formations, which have flourished since 9/11. Inside the right, new small formations such as the Identity Block, created in France in 2002 on the model of the Italian Northern League, Robert Spieler’s new popular right and the dissident National Front of Bruno Mégret, are starting to link with each other on a common ideology at the European level, organizing monthly meetings to form a European school for the political elite with the Vlaams Belang and the Identity Block.

We agree with our colleagues from Eurosphere when they say in their report (WP6.3) (Creutz-Kampi et al., 2011) ‘the very emergence of transnational patterns of interaction and identification seems to be reinforcing the national allegiance at the same time’. Moreover, the Eurosphere report (WP6.4) on the newly emerging trans-European public spaces (Sicakkan, 2011) documents that the pro-European transnational interactions have created their anti-European counterpart, namely, the anti-European transnational networks between European nationalist and nation-state oriented organizations. These remarks apply as well to the thrust of the National Front, re-emerging in France, to organize at the European level, too, with the British and the Flemish. In France, the initial linkage of the main democratic parties from liberal majorities to leftist oppositions in view of building a political Europe seems much looser and rather weakly organized, compared with the will of these new small but ideologically offensive formations to play a greater role in a European Public Sphere that comprises the new rights in formation. The democratic quality of transnational communicative processes in Europe remains limited as well, due to the lack of mass-based participatory infrastructures.

The Diversity Convention and the Race Directive were two big steps towards a democratic European Public Sphere because they oblige all European countries to clarify their position and political strategy on this issue, and on race and Islam in particular. It is the start of a long process. European institutions certainly should reflect more deeply on all the political, historical and scientific debates, and not just the penal jurisdictions. The wish of the elites and of citizens in general is that the European Union institutions deepen the normative effect the directives have produced on the democratic scene so as to build a global power founded on reaffirmed democratic values. The Republican will on all sides (right and left) not to yield to the European Union’s diversity perspective disconnected from the social issues and the fight for equality of rights and non-discrimination, around ethnic or ethno-national categories, could be presented as an alternative idea from France in the European Public Sphere. The requirement to hold the ‘laïcité’ line in the public sphere as well could be one of the main safety barriers proposed by France to preserve peaceful coexistence between all religions in the public space. Militants from Ni Putes ni Soumises are trying to export this secular message to European women in general.

Due to a divergence of the migration policies of the different nation-states and their desire to retain some autonomy, the Migration Treaty adopted at the end of the French European presidency settled on the most basic compromise on immigration in order to satisfy all the states; but for some, this text was considered regressive when compared to the existing situation in France.

Some respondents express their fear of seeing the European Union lead a regressive trend in matters of women’s rights, migration rights and human rights, but these voices are few compared to those who underline the decisive push the European Union gave to the democratization of the political landscape in each national European country. To build a democratic, multicultural Europe that breaks with its old devils, such as fascism, racism and xenophobia, is one advance promoted by the Race Directive in 2004. Since then, diversity has increased in complexity; with the enlargement and the financial crisis, the old devils are coming back into the frame. Beyond the race problem raised by the diversity issue, tolerance in matters of religious worship is directly linked to the definition of Europe’s future identity, to its values and way of life, to the question of radical Muslims. The religious question is now coming to the fore. A few respondents say that Turkey’s entrance will be the most important issue in the near future because it will force the European Union countries to face more directly the common identity and European Public Sphere they want to create.

So we can say, to conclude this section that:

Conclusions

The EU’s aim to create unified rights for its citizens and for those who participate in its market (Unity) and at the same time preserve some of the sovereignty of its member-states (Diversity of structures) seems a rocky road, full of contradictions. Despite a growing concentration of decision-making power at the EU level – or perhaps due to it? – ‘diversity’ has become the core of a powerful European discourse. Especially since the enlargements of 2004 and 2007, both the economic and the ethno-linguistic diversity within the Union have become considerable. Respect for ‘diversity’ refers to measures that protect member-states’ national languages and industries – a notable example are the regulations concerning audio-visual media (the Unesco Convention). But ‘diversity’ refers also to minorities within nation-states. Not only has the number of official languages used by the member-states mushroomed, but several of the member-states are also inhabited by sizeable linguistic minorities, who have at times shown dissatisfaction with their treatment. The Copenhagen Declaration of 1993 formulated a condition for the accession of new member-states: applicants were expected to adhere to certain common standards of democratic governance. Among other things, these included ‘human rights and respect for and protection of minorities’. In other words, respecting diversity is in itself one of the principles that are supposed to unite Europeans.

Both the EU and other transnational organizations have little power to enforce any specific minority policies in their member-states, and there seem to be no unified principles for this among the present members. During the accession negotiations prior to the 2004 enlargement, it was pointed out that the measures required from the accession countries were far more extensive than those applied in or required from the old members. Consequently, ideas of multiculturalism were often perceived in the Eastern Central European countries as something one needed to pay lip-service to as a necessary price for accession. The European Convention on Human Rights limits its protection explicitly to the implications of the non-discrimination principle, which is ‘only one of the pillars of a full-blown system of minority protection’. The Council of Europe’s (CoE) Charter for Regional or Minority Languages concerns itself only with languages spoken by historical minorities, thus ignoring immigrant groups’ linguistic rights; the CoE Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities leaves governments the freedom to decide who is, and who is not, a minority. In fact, member countries’ diversity policies display considerable variation, which ranges through different ‘incorporation patterns’, from corporatist (Sweden and the Netherlands) to liberal (Switzerland and Britain) to statist (France). Germany is seen as representing a blend of the first and the third models, or a ‘statist corporatist’ pattern. The member-states’ different preferences concerning their response to ethno-national diversity is in fact a huge challenge for the development of a fully fledged and integrated EPS. Obviously, as mentioned in the introduction, one basic problem is linguistic diversity. The possible development of EU policies and their implementation in the fields of minority policies and minority protection is, to a large extent, dependent on how these issues are understood and discussed in the domestic debate of each country. The many different languages of the EU make it difficult for an EPS to develop, simply because this diversity frustrates the development of pan-European media and enhances a natural tendency towards the emergence of elite subspheres for which proficiency in English is a prerequisite.

Today, national minorities – roughly 10% of the EU population – are the most important group that has some incentive to be interested in the European Polity because it may further their goals (such as regional autonomy) and may enhance the protection of ethno-national minority rights. Obviously, European policies have a massive influence on the daily lives of the other 90% of European citizens, but as long as these have the idea that influence is top–down, the development of a truly pan-European Public Sphere will be slow, and will come about mainly through a gradual process of Europeanization of national public spheres and national media. ⁸

On the other hand, despite the severe language barriers and the member states’ radically different approaches to diversity and a series of other policy issues, we observe the fostering of certain common discourse patterns and transnational relations both at citizen and elite levels. As a consequence, the national space has changed its configuration. With the Europeanization process, a new divide has appeared in the national space. The main political parties are gradually converging on a pro-integration stance. There is a Europeanization of party systems through a common European political space approach (Sicakkan, 2011). The EU level has also promoted other forms of communication than the usual protests in social movements: lobbying policy-making at the level of EU policy institutes and think-tanks. New attitudes and new methods are appearing. The networks of political actors create platforms that can be considered as the beginning of a trans-European civil society destined to become the backbone of the emerging EPS. The creation of these new kinds of transnational spaces transcends national borders through networks, solidarity, financial help, cross-border spaces and horizontal approaches. They coexist with the vertical structures and develop discourses in common, creating subspaces with interrelated discourses. This new situation will certainly make it necessary in future to answer in another way the questions posed in matters of rights and representation in host societies.

But, at present, under the concept of diversity, there is freedom to choose a model through implementation of a general framework that is liberal. Without strict guidelines, all interpretations of the mot d’ordre ‘diversity’ are possible, civic or ethnic, neo-conservative or progressist. This obligation of unity in diversity creates many tensions. Such a rhetoric masks the great disparity of situations to which the diversity of conceptions and structures of the different states leads. The function of the mot d’ordre and of its juridical instruments in reducing the range of inequalities within the different groups of European populations in national states appears not to be as efficient as it might be. In European rhetoric, the diversity and equality issues are still tightly connected to the idea of market improvements. Many specialists of the question point out as well how difficult it is to impose a social model in the increasing crisis of welfare states. The crisis is so widespread that it explains perhaps the slow evolution (or the hypothesis of evolution [Zanon & Scortino, 2011]) from the common market approach to an approach based on identity and values. It appears now that all the contradictions of the EU liberal project are gaining strength, leading to an evolution of the EU model from a market model to a model where social cohesion is finding room to face the growing disparities between poor and rich citizens, weaker and wealthier regions, and between the groups facing several handicaps (migrant women or handicapped migrants) and the rest. The rise of xenophobic identity fears that the majority of European countries are nourishing reflects this state of affairs.

The creation of a European Public Sphere implies reconnecting with a ‘cohesion’ inherited from history but in a different political context. The EU is today a sui generis construction in perpetual evolution, in which the notion of progress should be rethought in an open way: it is a weapon against the resurgence of totalitarian societies. We are at the beginning of this political and cultural dream shared among European citizens of forming a democratic Union and a laboratory of unseen diversity not so far from philosophical cosmopolitanism. It is vital not to regress to a time in history when Europeans fought each other. Nationalism and populism, both retrograde drives, should be contained by clear European guidelines (Klossa & Jamet, 2011). Democracy will be the loser if the EU is not perceived as something better than a bureaucratic staging-post of the alienating globalization process. The reluctance of nation-states to share their competencies and their democratic legitimacy with the European Union in order to renew the forms of politics may result in further weakening of the EU and introduce the risk of both common disintegration and political regression.