Toward a Citizens’ European Community?

European studies have given a limited attention to the actual formation of a community at the grass roots between European citizens, concentrating themselves whether on the EU political system or on the loyalty of citizens towards the EU. Throughout this article, we defend the idea that, in a democratic scenario, any ulterior breakthroughs of European integration (in security and defence matters or on ‘Social Europe’ for example) call for the existence of such citizens’ community. According to David Easton’s theory on political systems, such a community partly derives from the existence of positive feelings which are able to link together citizens of different nationalities. Different methods, which are illustrated in the following articles, are mobilized to study the present state of these feelings of community between Europeans. On the whole and for the time being, they point out that most EU citizens nor consider one another as outright strangers, neither as outright fellow citizens.