[masterboyz]

A complex question, and it deserves a complex answer (not least of all because in the coming decades it will be very important in terms of cohesion in Europe). I think it depends, if you can fit in then you're part of the culture and therefore European.

My own philosophy basically involves applying the premise that, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck then it's a duck. There is no point applying anything else, you cannot investigate the distant ancestry of the average person you see on the street, you judge whether or not he is British/German/French/Polish etc by how he looks & how he behaves. Everyone does this with people they don't know intimately.

So, a man of Indian extraction who is third generation in the UK but carries an Indian forename and surname, prays at a Sikh or Hindu place of worship, speaks with accented English and prefers bhangra music to whatever the preferred music of the day is will not be European or British in any sense of the word other than in terms of nationality (i.e. a British passport and the status of a citizen of an EU member state).

However someone whose foreign ancestry cannot be discerned from their phenotype, name, mannerisms, religion or accent is a different matter- to all intents and purposes we all fit into this category more or less (your non-European ancestry may be 5% of your DNA or 0.1% but the chances are that it will be there in some form), therefore it would be dishonest and arbitrary to exclude such people.