The ‘European way of life’, a new narrative for the EU? Institutions’ vs citizens’ view

Forêt, François; Trino, Noemi

doi:10.1080/23745118.2021.2020482

Cited by 8 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Umfragen legen nahe, dass er in der öffentlichen Debatte bisher nur bedingt auf Resonanz stößt. 54 Die Verbindung des Erhalts der "europäischen Lebensweise" mit einem breiteren Schutzversprechen, dass die Krisenfestigkeit und Wi derstandsfähigkeit europäischer Gesellschaften erhöhen will, ist dennoch relevant. Sie er weitert den Rahmen der zu bewahrenden Schutzgüter und Referenzobjekte und spiegelt dabei gleichzeitig nationale Diskurse, die vor allem die materiellen, aber auch immateri ellen Grundlagen sozialer Gemeinschaften als gleichermaßen bedroht wie erhaltenswert darstellen.…”

Section: Krisenfestigkeit Resilienz Und Der Schutz Der Europäischen L...unclassified

Vom Friedensprojekt zur Sicherheitsgarantin? Das neue Schutzversprechen der Europäischen Union in Zeiten existenzieller Ungewissheit

Bartenstein¹,

Hegemann²,

Merschel³

2022

integration

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This article analyses how and to what extent a new guiding narrative of European integration manifests itself in recent self-portrayals of the European Union (EU) as a guarantor of security and protection. This image creates and reproduces specific conceptions of the EU’s self and its fundamental “raison d'être”. The article shows that security in this context does not primarily denote the defense against concrete threats to the physical security of European citizens or critical infrastructures in a specific policy field. Rather, security is understood as a societal value that includes a much broader and more fundamental promise of stability, comfort and certainty in times perceived as crisis-ridden. The image of the EU as a guardian of comprehensive security and protection thus represents an attempt to provide a response to a widespread perception of a fundamental, often diffuse anxiety regarding the EU’s own ability to cope with current and future challenges facing European societies.

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Section: Krisenfestigkeit Resilienz Und Der Schutz Der Europäischen L...unclassified

Vom Friedensprojekt zur Sicherheitsgarantin? Das neue Schutzversprechen der Europäischen Union in Zeiten existenzieller Ungewissheit

Bartenstein¹,

Hegemann²,

Merschel³

2022

integration

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“…Similarly, the proposition in 2019 of an EU Vice-President for ‘Protecting our European way of life’ by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is telling, for it stressed the central, but exclusive and often unproblematized role that the concept of European heritage plays within the EU. Although Von der Leyen’s suggestion triggered heated public debate and ultimately resulted in the renaming of the portfolio into ‘Promoting our European Way of Life’ (Calligaro, 2021: 144), research by François Foret and Noemi Trino (2022) reveals that the notion of a ‘European Way of Life’ concerns a reading of European heritage which is rather broadly shared among European citizens.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: Heritage and the making of ‘Europe’

Waal

Weyenberg

Volk

2022

Journal of European Studies

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The notion of ‘European heritage’ plays an increasingly important role in the discursive constructions of a collective sense of European belonging. This Special Issue critically reviews some of the contemporary instrumentalizations of European heritage as processes of borderwork by which various political and non-political actors demarcate the boundaries of Europe and European identity. Specifically, the nine contributions shed light on some of the top-down and bottom-up uses of European heritage and explore whether the borderwork of European heritage delineates and separates Europeanness as an exclusive and singular identity, or whether it constitutes a space of exchange, flow and entanglement where Europeanness is defined as inclusive and pluralistic. Characterized by interdisciplinarity, methodological variety and a conception of Europe broader than the European Union, this Special Issue aims to broaden the scope of scholarship in European studies and (critical) heritage studies.

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“…Whilst it generated a discussion of the lack of democracy in the south, where EMU rules were considered too rigid and too strictly imposed by northern member states and the Troika, it generated a narrative of betrayal and prodigality in the north, where southern member states were depicted as unreliable and taking advantage of northern solidarity (Risse 2015). One of the most recent attempts to underpin a unifying sense of purpose through narrative came with the instalment of the new Von der Leyen Commission and her controversial attempt to appoint a ‘European Commissioner for the Protection of Our European Way of Life’, who, in practice, would be a Commissioner for Migration (Foret and Trino 2022). The word ‘protection’ sounded too xenophobic for the European Parliament, and Von der Leyen was forced to make a minor adjustment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peace, Prosperity and Protection: Narratives of Integration and the ‘Justification Jungle’ of Europe's Public Spheres

Wilde

2022

J of Common Market Studies

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The European Union (EU) is in search of a new narrative to create a sense of common purpose, but it is unclear around which values that narrative should be built. To analyse how different narratives resonate in Europe's public spheres, this article presents a novel dataset based on claims analysis of newspaper articles from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland and Denmark between 2012 and 2019 on the issues of migration, the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), trade and counterterrorism. Descriptive and logistic regression analyses show how different frames have been used for various policy agendas. This reveals considerable variation, but comparatively low levels of explained variance. Europe's public spheres can thus be described as a ‘justification jungle’, where many actors use a range of arguments to back up diverging political demands. This poses a formidable obstacle to any single narrative of European integration.

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The ‘European way of life’, a new narrative for the EU? Institutions’ vs citizens’ view

Cited by 8 publications

References 26 publications

Vom Friedensprojekt zur Sicherheitsgarantin? Das neue Schutzversprechen der Europäischen Union in Zeiten existenzieller Ungewissheit

Vom Friedensprojekt zur Sicherheitsgarantin? Das neue Schutzversprechen der Europäischen Union in Zeiten existenzieller Ungewissheit

Introduction: Heritage and the making of ‘Europe’

Peace, Prosperity and Protection: Narratives of Integration and the ‘Justification Jungle’ of Europe's Public Spheres

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