Images from Paradise. Eszter Salgó
an intimate “European family.” Ingrid Kylstad correctly argues that “The idea of Europe shares with Christianity the idea of a redemptive end, an end characterized by unity” (2010: 5).
The flourishing of the myth of a federal, united (and idyllic) Europe can be traced back to the post-1918 period. For the Austro-Hungarian intellectual Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, with the end of the First World War, the moment had come to finally give birth to the centuries-old “object of longing” (Villanueva: 2005). He urged the creation of a peaceful, united, and prosperous Europe in the form of a pan-European union of free nations, based on the Constitution of the United States of Europe, following the pattern of the United States of America (1926). His (anticommunist) Europe was to be bound together by Christian religion, European science, art, and culture. In 1929 Aristide Briand, French prime minister and honorary president of the Pan-Europa Movement (founded by Coudenhove-Kalergi), delivered a speech before the Assembly of the League of Nations proposing the idea of a federation of European nations; in 1931 French politician Édouard Herriot published The United States of Europe; and in 1933 Julien Benda penned An Address to the European Nation. In the 1930s and during the Second World War, several Italian anti-Fascist thinkers dreamed about a constitutional federation of Europe (Delzell 1960). Luigi Einaudi, Carlo Sforza, Carlo Rosselli, Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi, and Eugenio Colorni were among those who talked and wrote about the necessity to create a United States of Europe and launched concrete initiatives such as the European Federal Movement (Movimento Federalista Europeo). Others believed that only after the end of World War II was the moment ripe to accomplish the dream. Speaking on 19 September 1946 “about the tragedy of Europe,” Winston Churchill warned Europeans about the possible reappearance of the phantoms of the past—the dark ages “in all their cruelty and squalor … may still return”—but he also believed that there was a remedy that “would as if by a miracle transform the whole scene, and … make all Europe, or the greater part of it, as free and as happy as Switzerland” (1946). His pharmakon consisted in the re-creation of the European Family, in the construction of “a kind of United States of Europe,” a new home where reborn Europeans could dwell.
Despite the several cleavages dividing federalists, most were united by the core fantasy, inspired by the same paradise myth—the vision of a new mythical European community modeled on the famous American archetype. Soon, already in the 1950s and 1960s, however, the more modest model of functionalism began to replace the grand narrative of the federalist imaginary. Return to paradise still remained the final goal, but the journey was imagined as long and gradual (albeit still one-directional and teleological in nature). There was a widespread belief that integration in one area would provoke spillover effects and lead to integration in other areas, forming a chain of transformations at the end of which a political federal model would automatically emerge. The initial intergovernmental cooperation would yield to supranational cooperation, national identities would cease to evoke strong attachments, a strong (both cultural and civic) European identity would prevail, the EU would again become not just a legitimate organization but also an intimate community for members and an object of desire for potential members.
Starting from the 1970s, European cultural policy (officially the respect for cultural and linguistic diversity and promotion of a common cultural heritage) came to be seen as one of the key pieces missing in the puzzle, one of the last trials before completing the project of palingenesis through which the European family (with new Europeans) was to be born. Since then, transnational institutions have been active in developing the various dimensions of a “European cultural policy,” hoping to boost people’s awareness, facilitate the internalization of a “European cultural identity,” and ensure that Europe occupies its desired place in Europeans’ hearts, minds, and fantasies. According to Patrizia Isabelle Nanz, what prompted the EU to face its legitimacy through identity politics was the incapability of solving the problem of its “democratic deficit” through encouraging political participation in its institutions by means of institutional changes (2010: 286). For Stråth, in a period when the legitimacy of the European integration project was widely questioned, “identity replaced integration as the buzzword for the European unification project” (2010b: 385–86).
It was back in 1973 when the member states of the European Communities decided to pen a document on European identity. For them, what makes “the European Identity” original is
the diversity of cultures within the framework of a common European civilization, the attachment to common values and principles, the increasing convergence of attitudes to life, the awareness of having specific interests in common and the determination to take part in the construction of a United Europe. (European Council 1973)
The European identity was portrayed as a necessary element in the “dynamic construction of a United Europe,” in particular in the framing of a “genuinely European foreign policy.” The purpose of the Tindemans Report (published two years later, in 1975) was more general; it proposed measures aimed at transforming the “technocrats’ Europe” into a “People’s Europe” by bringing Europe close to its citizens and kindling the imagination of its disenchanted populations. Cultural policy received an official recognition at the Stuttgart European Council meeting: there was a call for a “closer co-operation on cultural matters, in order to affirm the awareness of a common cultural heritage as an element in the European identity” and improve upon “the level of … information on Europe’s history and culture so as to promote a European awareness” (European Council 1983: 25, 28).
The “Adonnino Report,” launched in 1985, aimed to adopt measures to strengthen and promote the European Community’s identity and its image both for its citizens and for the rest of the world, thus contributing to the “realization of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe.” It therefore proposed: the foundation of a European Academy of Science, Technology and Art, an institution with international influence able “to highlight the achievements of European science and the originality of European civilization in all its wealth and diversity”; the creation of community symbols such as a flag and an anthem; the formation of European sports teams; the confirmation of 9 May as Europe Day; the use of European stamps; the minting of a European coinage (the ECU); the launching of a Euro-lottery, “to make Europe come alive for the Europeans”; and the setting-up of a center displaying European achievements and the common heritage, backed up by a collection of documents and works relating thereto (Adonnino 1985: 22, 24). The publication of the “Adonnino Report” was the first explicit step toward selling the Community. As a result, the marketing of Europe as a kind of “brand product” became the key strategy through which the Community sought to tackle its problem of image and communication. These initiatives contradicted the official rhetoric that portrayed European integration as a “natural process.” Furthermore, the artificial creation and promotion of European symbols, starting in the mid-1980s, as part of the so-called “A People’s Europe” project is justly portrayed by Chris Shore as a form of (illegitimate) ideological indoctrination by European institutions (2000, 2001).
Pascal Fontaine’s A Citizen’s Europe (1991) expressed conviction about the irreversibility of the process of European unification and its metamorphosis from a purely technocratic process into a “profoundly humanistic enterprise”:
The goals of “A people’s Europe” have been achieved. Who would fail to recognize the European flag symbolizing European unification? Who would not feel moved when listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the future anthem of a united Europe? Who does not enjoy following the “European Community” sign in airport arrival halls and possessing a uniform passport, and of course, “What European would not feel at home visiting Europe’s high spots of culture and savoir-vivre?” (Fontaine 1991: 44)
These and other symbolic measures are not purely decorative according the document. They fire most Europeans’ imaginations; they are similar to national symbols that represent state sovereignty and “testify to the substantial progress made by an idea which has now been transformed from myth into reality” (Fontaine 1991: 7). What proves the triumph of the EC’s cultural policy, asserts the author, is the emergence of Homo europeus. To increase the number of “new Europeans,” citizens must be enlightened through public information and consciousness-raising programs; they all need to gain awareness