But the leaders of the EU were not in a position to invest much effort in building an alternative new identity.5 They did not create a single European citizenship; rules for citizenship remained the province of individual member states. The symbols of nationhood such as a flag and an anthem came late, and the EU’s diverse membership had no common civic education. But the most important failure was in the democratic accountability of the EU itself. The most powerful institution within the EU was the European Commission, an unelected technocratic body whose main purpose was to promote a single
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