Negotiating Europe

The strongest symbolic underpinning of European integration is Europe itself. Europe functions as a mobilizing metaphor, a sign of recognition that indicates belonging to a community in formation. Europe is identified with a Phoenician princess whose iconic figure highlights the Greek origins of European culture; Europe is understood as a cultural entity that shares fundamental values—reason, the rule of law, progress, democracy—inherited from a common history: classical Greco-Roman civilization, Christianity, the Enlightenment; Europe is represented as a land of freedom and welfare that appeals millions of immigrants each year; Europe is also associated with a story of teleological progress, a construction that started after World War II with the coal and steel community imagined to prevent further war between Germany and France, then developed into the European common market, and later into the European Union (EU).¹ These and similar narratives of Europe are developed and referred to in order to support variegated views of Europe as a political project. Ernst Haas has pointed out the remarkable resilience and adaptability of what refers to as the symbol of Europe or “United Europe,” which is used by actors with radically different approaches and agendas.² In his analysis, published in 1958, Haas spoke of actors at the national level.

In 1955, Jean Monnet, then president of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) wrote: “Our Community will only truly be realized if the actions it takes are made public and explained publicly … to the people of our Community.”¹ According to Jacques-René Rabier, first director of the Joint Press and Information Service of the ECSC,² most actors who were active in the High Authority were not interested in information and it was essentially the personal commitment of Monnet that led to the early development of an informational action. The information policy started “spontaneously”³—without being mentioned in the treaties—as early as 1953, although the official Service de Presse et d’Information was created in October 1955. From the very outset, information policy was given a political objective: the creation of European citizens.⁴ In numerous testimonies, Jacques-René Rabier described himself and his collaborators as “ fonctionnaires-militants” or “missionaries,” who openly admitted their desire to nurture a European consciousness.⁵ Considering the lack or at least the very limited character of this European spirit after 50 years of European integration, the efficiency of this “militant” information policy should be questioned. In an article discussing the first decade of the Information Service, Piers N. Ludlow underlines the discrepancy between its “lofty ambitions” and the concrete implementation and results of its policies.⁶

Moving from the academic to the cultural field, this chapter shows the ways in which over the last 40 years the promotion of European cultural heritage has become a central element of EU cultural policy and an important means of defining Europeanness at the EU level. The concept of European cultural heritage is pivotal to the promotion of Europeanness because it functions as medium of both hegemonic and decentralized representations of Europe. Interestingly, the concept first appeared at the EU level in a motion for a resolution presented by the EP a few months before the Declaration on European identity of December 1973. Many scholars have interpreted this Declaration as a significant turn in the European integration process, indicative of the decision of the nine member states of the EC to exploit the concept of identity in order to give new momentum in a context of crisis.¹ Although the introduction of the concept of European cultural heritage to the EP agenda in the years 1973–1974 was a notably less solemn affair, I argue that it exerted a greater influence on the process of instrumentalization of cultural identity at the European level. This chapter shows that, with the support of the EP, Commission officials used the protection of cultural heritage as a means of promoting a Community action in the cultural sector.

In their attempt to bring Europe closer to the people, the EU institutions did not set up a centralized and homogenous identity policy, rather they engaged in a negotiation of Europeanness. The various actors involved in the promotion of Europe do not share identical visions of what European identity is or should be. There is a negotiation of Europeanness among the EU institutions, and as a result there has been and continues to be a range of different symbolic approaches and objectives. There is also negotiation with noninstitutional actors whom the EU institutions “interpellate” and invite to participate in the conception and/or communication of Europeanness. The polyvocal nature of these processes—polyvocal at the level of both the institutions and the noninstitutional actors—accounts for the various appropriations of the symbol “Europe.” In the cases that I explored, Europe could describe a continued process of unification dating back in prehistory or a project of economic and political integration launched after World War II; Europe could refer only to the EC member states or encompass European countries beyond the Iron Curtain; Europe could evoke a glorious history of perpetual progress or recall the wars and destruction of which it was the scene; Europe could be a high culture common to all the EU member states or a combination of countless local traditions and ways of life.