There is a state of uncertainty, not about the desirability of a European civil society (as Gandhi said of Western civilisation, it sounds like a good idea) but about its reality. I have become, if anything, somewhat more tentative about the claims one can make for the existence of anything one might want to call civil society at a European or European Union (EU) level, as distinct from the several and sometimes overlapping civil societies located in the individual member states of the EU. The existence of a section called ‘civil society’ on an EU website publicising relevant conferences and so forth provides only limited reassurance here. There are of course numerous civil society organisations with a European/EU reference, ranging from the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) to more informal social movements and lobbying organisations representing the interests of consumers, cyclists and others. There is also of course the European Social Forum, emerging in 2002 out of the global social movement, the World Social Forum, and playing an equally prominent if occasional role. The question is whether all this amounts to something we might meaningfully call a European or EU civil society.

Two books have had a particular influence on my thinking. One is Michael Billig's Banal Nationalism, the other is Larry Siedentop's Democracy in Europe. Referring to such everyday examples as national flags outside public buildings, Billig points out the extent to which nation-state categories frame our social experience and our most basic assumptions: