As British holidaymakers return from the sunsoaked beaches of Spain and their rural retreats in Italy and France, it is harder than ever to see whether we will become more European. We may have refuelled our love of Italian wine, French food and German cars, but this never quite translates into a new European identity.

For decades the European Commission has tried to foster a sense of European identity. Programmes such as Erasmus and Socrates are just one strand. The European flag, European passport and appropriation of the Ode to Joy as a European anthem are part of this effort.

But it has failed. On so many indicators Europe is united not by Europeanness, but rather by the influence of the United States.

It causes angst in France to admit it, but in every European country the best-loved films are American, American music has the greatest fan base, and even the most popular fast food is American.

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When the founders of the European Union conceived it, their implicit goal was to replicate national structures at a European level.

It may have started with free trade and the single market, but everyone knew the end goal was a Europe with all of the classic institutions of a nation state: a parliament to pass laws, an army to defend the borders, a single currency to tie the economies together and, in time, a common culture.

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Instead, if Europe is going anywhere, and I write as one who believes there is an immensely valuable project to be carried out in Europe, it is becoming more like one of the great old empires than a classic nation state.

Much has been written about the revival of nationalism in the 1990s. But worldwide the most powerful countries are nearly all multinational and multilingual - the US, China, Russia and India being cases in point. In an age of heightened cultural awareness, there is something attractive about the tolerance that was shown by the Austro-Hungarian empire or the Ottomans, at their best. Untied to a particular language or ethnic group, they were far more at ease with diversity.

My guess is that if Europe is to succeed in the next century it needs to stop doing all the things that make it like a nation state.

It needs to stop thinking about common currencies, which in any event already exist through the wonders of credit cards and cash machines. It needs to stop thinking about a common defence policy, not least because there are such widely varying military cultures in Europe, ranging from the French and British ease with war at one pole, to the Finns' and Danes' distrust at the other. It also needs to stop being quite so obsessed with creating a Euro culture, a Euro identity, Euro films and Euro television.

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After all, the positive effect of programmes like Erasmus is that they make people more aware of how different we are, and of what an extraordinary wealth of cultures Europe contains. They make people aware that it is often easier to like and respect people who are different from you, rather than people who are exactly the same.

Not that this implies a return to the nation state, or a Europe des patries. The Euro identity is problematic precisely because it is trying to be like a nation state at the very moment when even nation states are not very good at doing it and regions are splintering off and new minorities finding a role.

But it does imply a more relaxed Europe, which puts more effort into delivering real, tangible benefits to its citizens and rather less to endless redesigns of an ersatz identity.

Geoff Mulgan is director of Demos, the independent think-tank.

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