“European nations are not single detached villas, but apartments in the same building” (p. 297). This is the conclusion put by Bettina Westle and Paolo Segatti in the concluding chapter of their edited volume on European Identity in the context of national identity. This work offers a number of different insights on the relationship between European and national identity, as for example, identity issues at the mass and elite level, or at the subnational, national, and European level, and is complemented with insights from different overlapping research fields. In the first chapter, the editors set the scene for the subsequent empirical studies in terms of theoretical thoughts, analytical considerations, and information on, as well as restrictions about, the database used by the overwhelming majority of empirical studies that follow. Being fully aware of the fact that the concept of identity is “a vague term and denotes a very broad unclear concept” (p. 3), the editors state that European identity needs to be understood differently than national identity. In most general terms, they define identity as an orientation or attitude “organized along a continuum of a cognitive, an evaluative, and a conative dimension” (p. 20; emphasis in the original version). Building on this definition, an extensive operationalization for all available indicators to map identity issues is provided in a final step.

The introductory remarks are followed by different empirical studies that can ideally be separated into two different sections: While the first five chapters are dedicated to questions on the inherent relationship between national and European identity, the subsequent chapters focus on some related research topics and thus make the volume interesting for scholars of other domains as well. Borbála Göncz and György Lengyel start the inquiry by investigating national elites’ conceptions of national and European identity and are able to show that political elites of different countries have different conceptions of identities. In contrast, Christian Schnaudt, Stefanie Walter, and Sebastian A. Popa are interested in the elite, not the mass, level when studying identity issues. More specifically, the authors study the subnational (i.e., local and regional) and national territorial identification and their interrelations. Their findings show that with the exception of regions with strong independence movements, such as Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Scotland, multiple identities exist. This is strengthened by the findings of the three following empirical studies, taking into account not only (sub) national identities but also the question of a European identity. Accordingly, Bettina Westle and Roman Graf Buchheim conclude that the multiple prevalence of national and European identity is the dominating phenomenon, and Simona Guglielmi and Christiano Vezzoni show that “existing national identities will be restructured by Europeanization” (p. 164). Paolo Segatti and Simona Guglielmi are even able to go one step further. On the basis of their findings, they state that there is a kind of baseline model in most countries under consideration whereby national identity can be regarded as a mediator of identification with Europe.

These congruent findings are accompanied by additional perspectives that have been rather neglected by scholars of European identity so far. Radoslaw Markowski and Michal Kotnarowski study the impact of partisanship on European identity, whereas Pierangelo Isernia and Maurizio Cotta investigate national and European identity, contrasting it with literature and empirical evidence on citizens’ attitudes toward globalization. A slightly different perspective is taken by Westle and Tuuli-Marja Kleiner, who study a clearly different dimension of identity, namely, trust toward other (European) people, which is conceived as “a possible dimension of identity and diffuse support of political communication” (p. 269) and might be an interesting route for future research of European identity. Finally, Fabio Serricchio and Paolo Bellucci study the attitudinal consequences of European identity.

Altogether, this edited volume is certainly a successful attempt to study the linkage between European and national identity and is recommended for scholars of European identity in particular. In contrast to many studies focusing mainly on Western European countries, this volume also takes into account Central and Eastern European countries. Moreover, the different empirical studies make consistent usage of one data source only (the 2007 and 2009 elite and mass study of the IntUne project), thus avoiding problems of comparability. Finally, most authors formulate well-grounded theoretical assumptions and use appropriate statistical approaches (ranging from descriptive analyses to such different types of multivariate techniques as factor analysis, structural equation modeling, simple regression analysis, and multilevel regression analysis) for their testing.

Nonetheless, although European Identity in the Context of National Identity is well conceived and most of the chapters are systematically executed, one can always find areas for improvement. In this regard, I would like to mention two different kinds. First and maybe most importantly, a clear link between the financial crisis and identity issues is somewhat lacking. Although explicitly referred in the subtitle of the volume, the connection between the crisis that hit the world economy in 2007–8 and European identity is established at only a very superficial level in both the theoretical foundations of the work (Chapter 1) and the subsequent empirical studies. Needless to say, when reading of “the wake of the financial crisis” (in the subtitle), one would certainly not expect detailed theoretical assumptions of crisis effects on identity issues, but maybe some readers may be disappointed at some point when they discover that the volume provides only a very weak link between European identity and the crisis. This is, namely, the statement in Chapter 1 by the editors that they are “unable to determine whether the relationship between national and European identity has been worsened by the Great Recession and reactions against austerity policies” (p. 4). The only chapter referring more explicitly to the crisis is presented by Serricchio and Belluci. Nevertheless, the authors restrict their findings insofar as they state that they study the phenomenon too early—a critical note that, in my opinion, is highly necessary since a multitude of empirical studies taking into account empirical evidence from later years were able to show that the crisis indeed had the potential to affect citizens’ political attitudes.

A second possibility for improvement of the volume concerns the linkage between the theoretical and analytical background set in the first chapter and most of the following chapters. Although Westle and Segatti (Chapter 1) set the theoretical foundations and, accordingly, the operationalization aspects in a very reasonable way, this has not been applied coherently in the subsequent steps of the empirical analyses. But to be fair, one has to mention that this is a kind of criticism that might apply for most edited volumes. Even with these shortcomings, this is an important work that contributes to the further debate on European identity.