Europe is in the midst of turmoil. The credit crunch has created a severe financial crisis, unemployment is on the rise, European Union institutions are under stress, and citizens’ trust in political elites is at a low point. In the midst of this Eurocrisis, the common European currency that gives the crisis its name has had its tenth anniversary. Operative since 2002, the Euro was an unprecedented experiment in monetary integration and took European unification further toward supranational union. The Euro is, however, not merely an economic phenomenon. In this volume, editor Giovanni Moro and contributors chart the political, social, cultural, and above all identitarian features of the Euro, viewing the currency through the prism of European citizenship. In going beyond the political economy and institutional theory of the Euro (and the crisis) the book is an innovative and important contribution to the study of European integration.

The main message of the volume is that citizenship and identity matter as interpretive tools for understanding the importance of the Euro for European politics and society. Giovanni Moro presents the volume as a “phenomenological” exercise (p. 8) and not as a straightforward normative appraisal in the manner of most academic discussions of European citizenship. The chapters do not, however, gel into a coherent whole in terms of the vocabulary used to depict European citizenship and identity in relation to the single currency. Rather, they fit together more as a collection of essays on different aspects of “unveiling the other side of the coin,” as the succinct subtitle of the volume suggests. Notwithstanding this caveat, there is clearly a common thread in the broad methodological sense. The book is clearly written within the constructivist vein of political science, drawing on insights from political sociology and anthropology. Constructivism has been somewhat on the wane in European studies in recent years, but this book highlights its utility in the study of transformations of political order and especially of the nation-state form. The single currency and supranational citizenship both put our conceptual lenses and political “imagination” to the test. At the same time, the volume does not fall into the trap of treating them as so-called sui generis phenomena which defy the normal language of political science. Instead, it highlights linkages between them in practice as well as in symbolic terms. Hence, European citizenship is not taken as a “given” fact that stands in a succinct relation to the single currency or the integration process. Citizenship is conceptualized in the volume as access to rights, some form of belonging or identity to the political community, and a mode of participation. This means that the link between the Euro and European citizenship is taken as discursively constructed politically, socially or economically. Consequently, the volume is divided into three parts. The first on “multiple links” discusses issues linked to money and currency in political life, the second focuses attention on European identity, and the third treats the status of European citizenship in the Euro turmoil.

The chapters by Thierry Vissol and by Matthias Kaelberer discuss how money and currencies construct trustworthy means of exchange in an effective and modern economy and at the same time represent important symbols of political community for states in an interstate environment. The choice to join the Euro was thus steeped in symbolism and identity issues. Indeed Kathleen McNamara, echoing Benedict Anderson, claims that the Euro was not only about economic integration; it was also constructed to “create an ‘imagined’ community of Europeans” (p. 23). Like historical myths, past experiences, and symbols like a flag, national anthem or constitution, a common currency thus conveys as certain imaginary of community, even in the supranational European Union.

Most chapters in the book appreciate that European identity is a deeply contested concept that is intensely debated by both citizens and scholars. Skeptics have argued that European identity is something of a non-starter since the European Union lacks the necessary pre-requisites such as a common history, culture or language. Proponents have flipped this argument on its head to claim European identity as a panacea against overt nationalism exactly on the grounds that the European Union does not hold these properties. The chapters of this volume commendably do not take sides in this debate. Instead they chart different aspects of the Euro as a means of identity construction. In so doing, the book highlights the complex construction of identity between economy, politics, and citizens’ acts as members of a supranational community. In this regard, Thomas Risse’s chapter is a center-piece of the book in its focus on how the single currency impacts on Europeanization of collective identities. The picture in terms of Europeanization is mixed, yet Thomas Risse shows the importance of understanding such issues not only from a supranational perspective, but also from a national one. The Euro harmonized the currency systems of some of the strongest national currencies of modern capitalism, and was a political project whose identity construction played out very differently in, say, France than it did in Germany (Risse, pp. 113–116).

This political fact of the Euro is indeed at the center of the final part of the book, which deals with European citizenship in the midst of the Euro turmoil. Vivien Schmidt and Cris Shore analyze in their chapters yet another side of the coin: the Euro may not have strengthened European identity at all but rather weakened the salience of European citizenship altogether. The Euro’s “complicity” in the financial crisis through its macro-economic deficiencies has in part spurred a model of austerity politics that may lead to less opportunities for European citizens to enact their rights, and to less belief in the European project. Indeed, in the final chapter, Dario Castiglione intriguingly shows that the Eurocrisis which comes after two decades of “silent constitution building” in the European Union exacerbates the disconnect of citizens from the political and constitutional reality of supranational integration. The phenomenological exercise of this volume ends, then, with a normative plea: The silence must be broken. The social reality of post-Maastricht unification and a single currency must be subject to real and engaged debate linking to the institutional future of European politics. As such, Dario Castiglione highlights perhaps the one major flaw of the volume: while it commendably focuses on political practices related to the link between citizenship, identity and the Euro, it largely overlooks the wider impact of institutional crisis reforms and crucial policy choices taken in crisis. These have partly been taken outside the democratic bodies of Europe and their impact on viable and meaningful democratic citizenship in Europe need to be addressed from political, empirical, and normative perspectives. As such, this volume is, for all its important groundwork in charting the link between the Euro project and European citizenship, also a missed opportunity.