The Idea of the European Union as a Cosmopolitan Empire: A Critical Assessment

The aim of this paper is to submit the concept of the European Union as a “cosmopolitan empire”, proposed by Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande (2007), to a critical discussion. As it attempts to grasp this concept in its practical rather than its theoretical form, it discusses the “ideal” of a European cosmopolitan empire in relation to the criteria of excellence and coherence. Compared to abstract universalism and to national relativism, the cosmopolitan ideal can be seen as a higher synthesis, since it transcends the dilemma between the effacement or the essentialisation of cultural differences. However, this synthesis, when translated into practice, reveals certain ambiguities that undermine its feasibility. The concept of a “cosmopolitan empire” emerges as a proposed solution, with European identity being reframed through the lens of cosmopolitanisation or transnationalisation. This perspective entails a profound openness and inclusion of the so-called “others”. An empire is supposed to be a political structure capable of incorporating differences within a transnational framework of governance. However, this concept sits uneasily with the historically-embedded meanings of European imperial practice which are better captured through the concept of a “neo-medieval empire” as proposed by Jan Zielonka (2007). The civilising mission, a historically prominent imperial function, relies on a fundamental dichotomy between the intrinsically necessary status of imperial polity and the contingent status of rival polities. If the cosmopolitan ideal, which seeks to transcend the distinction between “us” and the “others”, is embodied within such a mission, it risks producing a heterogeneous international society that is surreptitiously perceived as being homogeneous. This incoherence would hinder the recognition of the validity and the reality of divergent value systems and the concept of a cosmopolitan empire would thereby fail in its ambition to regulate the anomic conflicts characteristic of a “second modernity”.