Since the 1980s, the transformation of the former Eastern bloc, Germany's reunification, the enlargement and deeper integration of the European Union, together with persistent debates on immigration, migration and flight, focused attention on issues of historical and cultural (local, regional and national) identities. In the Member States of the European Union, the propagation of a new European identity was accompanied by the emergence or re-emergence of fragmented and unstable national and ethnic identities. Seemingly established collective, national identities became contested political terrain and the focus of political struggles.