Transnational Actors and Stories of European Integration: Clash of Narratives by Wolfram Kaiser

Author:Wolfram Kaiser [Kaiser, Wolfram]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367086466
Goodreads: 41642574
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

On message? The 'New Narrative'

The ‘New Narrative’ declaration raises questions about the text’s objectives, structure and content. When it took charge of the project, the European Commission adopted Løkkegaard’s phrase ‘a new narrative for Europe’. Actually, the first version of the Commission-hosted website (European Commission, 2014a) then stipulated that the project would develop

a new all-encompassing narrative [that] should take into account the evolving reality of the European continent and highlight that the EU is not solely about the economy and growth, but also about cultural unity and common values in a globalized world.

Far from envisaging any narrative ‘unity in diversity’, a slogan habitually used by the Commission, DG COM thus started on a hegemonic quest to replace existing narratives of European integration with one new narrative. It was clear from the project’s origins and the composition of the Cultural Committee that such a narrative would not primarily emphasise the strengthening of a European identity over time, but rather the EU’s alleged contemporary ‘cultural unity and common values’.

Two points quickly became clear as the project progressed, however. First, members of the Cultural Committee and other participants in key project events rejected the Commission’s hyperbolic objective as either unrealistic or undesirable in a pluralistic EU. Responding to these objections, the Commission, first, changed its informal terminology from ‘a new narrative’ to just ‘new narrative for Europe’ in the declaration. This choice left the option open that the committee had only produced one among several possible narratives. Second, neither DG COM nor the Cultural Committee were clear about what existing narrative or narratives they wished to revise or replace. In fact, the project website and several speakers at the general assemblies, including Barroso himself, frequently referred to key elements of traditional narratives. They included integration as ‘peace through a common market’ (European Commission, 2014a) or the protection of human rights invoked by Barroso in his speech in Warsaw on 11 July 2013, a trope that also features prominently in visions of the EU as a ‘normative power’ (Manners, 2002) and the ‘progressive’ Promethean narrative analyzed by Nikola Petrović in his contribution to this special issue.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the declaration’s eclectic structure to some extent already reflects existing historical and contemporary justifications of European integration. In the first section, the declaration talks about numerous challenges to Europe as ‘a state of mind’. It goes on to discuss lessons of past experience, starting with the First World War. In the section ‘The Renaissance meets Cosmopolitanism’, the declaration then demands that the arts and sciences make a major contribution to tackling shared problems, which in turn can help ‘Europe’ shape global politics based on its own values and vision for the future.

The narrative’s content evolves around common values, ‘lessons of history’, a need to reinvent the EU in times of crisis through a European ‘cosmopolitanism’ building on the Renaissance experience, and a resulting shared commitment to improving ‘humanity’s well-being’. The declaration claims, to begin with, that Europe’s ‘spiritual, philosophical, artistic and scientific inheritance’ has largely shaped Europe as ‘a state of mind’.

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