Abstract The citizenship of the EU is not only a set of rights, but also of civic behaviours and representations. In this article, I analyse these moral and sociological foundations of EU citizenship, stressing the limits of classic interpretations in terms of identification to or support for the EU. Instead, I suggest reading the evolution of EU citizenship as a process of political recognition. Such an analytical framework, inspired by recent works of Axel Honneth and Paul Ricoeur, leads one to understand this process as a threefold evolution: critical assessment of one's own national identity; transformation of the perception of other nationalities; and identification to the EU. Such a reading also compels us to pay attention to the limits of these processes: mutual recognition is an unending process which does not exclude the persistence of nationalistic reactions, hegemonic temptation and the revival of xenophobic attitudes vis-a-vis other Member States and third countries. I conclude that any project to render EU identity thicker needs to take care of the risk of jeopardising the fragile acquis.