19 Tis chapter deals with a few aspects which illustrate the basic con- text of European identity and discusses the development of national identity into European identity. In this chapter, I try to combine dif- ferent scientifc disciplines, such as social anthropology, political sci- ence, political economy, European studies and linguistics, in order to approach European identity in an interdisciplinary context 1 and spe- cifcally, as a supranational identity that is created by political elites. Hence, in this chapter, I mention some basic theories of nationalism and national identity that I consider necessary to the study of European identity. Tereafter, I focus on the nation state, its crises and its replace- ment by post-national regimes, such as the European Union, given that European identity, from my viewpoint, is directly linked to state and suprastate apparatuses. Moreover, I refer to diferent approaches to European identity (transnational, post-national, etc.), and present a 2 The Construction of European Identity: From Nation State to the European Union © Te Author(s) 2019 S. Boukala, European Identity and the Representation of Islam in the Mainstream Press, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93314-6_2 1 According to Weiss and Wodak an interdisciplinary approach can be adopted if a context is understood not as a specifc setting in space/time or situational framework but rather as some- thing that requires a more comprehensive theoretical explanation in order to be examined (Weiss and Wodak 2003, p. 21).