La cittadinanza europea: appartenenza e solidarietà in prospettiva cosmopolitica.

The European Convention, when preparing the Constitution for an enlarged Europe, had to translate into legal and political praxis the new concept of post-national, cosmopolitan oriented citizenship, a concept which emerged in the debate of the 1990s. Modern culture established the citizen's status upon a model of solidarity based on likeness. It refers to those belonging to the same national community, defined by a real or alleged, cultural and historical homogeneity. It is now necessary to see whether the conditions to create new forms of civic solidarity exist, as to merge through dialogue the principles of similarity and difference. It is an issue that concerns the future of democracy, not just in Europe, but in the world, since globalization has produced global changes. The paper analyzes those changes, highlighting opportunities and risks. Many myths of the past are now put to test when reviewing the principles of public discourse and citizen's responsibility in a multicultural prospective. Amongst others, the paper criticizes the wrong, because anti-historical, conviction that the identity of nation states are based on memories. Lastly, the paper illustrates the definition of European citizenship within the project of the Constitution to emphasize its positive or negative aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]