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Every generation redefines what it means to belong to Europe. For young people in 2025 — the first generation that has never known a Europe without a common currency in much of the continent, never known a Europe without Erasmus+, and that has grown up navigating simultaneously digital global and intensely local identities — the answers to that question are more nuanced, and more interesting, than political debate typically allows for.
What the Surveys Say
The European Commission's Eurobarometer consistently finds that young people (15–30) report higher levels of European identity than older age groups. Approximately 70% of young Europeans report feeling "European" alongside their national identity — not instead of it, but in addition to it. The sense of dual or multiple belonging is characteristic: most young Europeans feel simultaneously local, national, and European, without experiencing these as contradictions.
What young people associate with European identity is also shifting. Where older generations tended to emphasise institutional features — the EU, the euro, the single market — younger generations are more likely to cite values: democracy, freedom of movement, cultural diversity, and solidarity. The EU as an institution is less central to their European identity than it once was; the idea of Europe as a shared civilizational project is more so.
The Complications
The survey data presents a relatively positive picture that conceals real complexity. European identity is experienced very differently by young people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, different parts of the continent, and different ethnic and cultural heritages. Freedom of movement — the practical experience of European identity for many — is significantly more accessible to those with education, language skills, and economic resources.
The young person from a well-connected urban family who has done an Erasmus+ exchange, worked in three countries, and has friends across Europe experiences European identity very differently from the young person in a small town with no qualifications and no international connections. Both are equally European. The meaning of that differs enormously.
Turkey's Position in the European Identity Question
For young people in Türkiye — a country with deep European ties, ongoing institutional relationships with the EU, and a complex geopolitical position — the question of European identity carries particular weight. Research consistently shows that many young Turks feel culturally connected to Europe — through shared values, educational experience, and family connections — while also feeling excluded from formal European belonging by the stalled accession process.
This ambiguity is not only Turkish. Young people across the EU's neighbourhood — in the Western Balkans, in Ukraine, in the South Caucasus — navigate similar questions. Youth work that engages with this complexity, rather than offering either simple inclusion or exclusion narratives, performs a genuine service.
What Youth Work Can Offer
Youth exchanges and intercultural programmes create one of the few spaces where young people can explore what European identity means to them in practice — not as an abstract concept, but through real relationships, shared experiences, and honest dialogue. This is one of the most valuable things Erasmus+ does: it makes European identity experiential rather than institutional.