Vztah Čechů a Belgičanů k evropské integraci
Ondřej Novotný
Relations of Czechs and Belgians toward European IntegrationThis article concerns a development in the study of the European attitudes with two comparative examples of the Czech Republic and Belgium. We consider that more then a simple study of the European attitudes, it is necessary to see a complex relation that citizens and researchers could have toward the EC/EU. The relations emerge from political competencies and not from the attitudes that impose very often to see citizens only as an object of the study. The relations could be studied through two axes. The first is about approaches and tradition in appropriation of the EU’s problematic; the second is linked to the axe of temporality that design consecutive apparitions of the EU in the field of our interest: We argue that both axes are developed in specific national ways with translation from other regional approaches. Belgium research is in such way oriented to historical and elite based studies or express preoccupation about knowledge level of the EU among its citizens. The Czech Republic’s researches have to deal more with question of utilitarianism predicted to CEEs countries and with an impact of party identification on the European attitudes. We conclude nevertheless that citizens are also competent and active subjects in the definition of their relations to the EU what is seen at least when we study them in a time when the EU became temporally an important object of their interest.
