‘Politics as Usual’ on the ‘European Stage’: Constructing and Performing ‘European Identities’

Abstract

Since its beginnings in the 1950s, the shape of what is now known as the European Union (EU) has been constantly evolving. The original six members have grown to twenty-seven, the number of official languages to twenty-three, and the economic, legal and political ties have expanded and deepened. As the former Spanish prime minister and vehement socialist supporter of European integration Felipe Gonzáles stated in a famous speech in the European Parliament, it has become necessary to define what the European Union is, and not to rest contented with defining what it is not. Gonzáles also observes explicitly that no common definition of what the EU is supposed to be has been found as yet; no consensus was reached by the official governments of the EU organizations. This is why ‘European soul searching’, the search ‘for European identities’ has been ongoing for several years and — because of the fact that identities are never static and fixed — will most probably continue in the foreseeable future (see Weiss, 2002, 2003; Wodak and Weiss, 2001, 2007[2005]). The French anthropologist Marc Abélès who conducted the first ethnographic in-depth study of the European Parliament and of European organizations in the late 1980s concluded quite rightly that the European organizations are unique and exceptional because of the enormous complexity of national traditions, political ideologies, cultural differences, and multilingualism (Abélès, 1992; Abélès et al., 1993).