Paper short abstract:

The paper explores how the EU heritage/history initiatives narrate the story of the origins of EU Europe by emphasizing both historical continuity in Europe and a break with the past manifested particularly in the destruction of WWII.

Paper long abstract:

Along with the EU’s increased interest in a common European memory, narration as a means to create, mediate, and communicate about it has gained new momentum. By applying the Discourse-Mythological Approach, I explored how the EU narrates the story of the origins of EU Europe—i.e. Europe as a polity that has both political and non-political bases—in its two recent heritage/history initiatives. The analysis focuses on the key heritage initiative of the European Commission—the European Heritage Label—and the European Parliament’s visitor centre called Parlamentarium. The data consist of policy documents, informational and promotional material of these initiatives, and images and texts from the permanent exhibition of the ‘History area’ in Parlamentarium. The analysis brought out three storylines in the mythmaking of EU Europe. The first founding myth emphasizes the idea of a common cultural origin of Europeans and EU Europe’s historical continuity from the past. Besides this founding myth emphasizing historical continuity and shared values, the data also include storylines that stem from the idea of a break with the past. In this second founding myth, EU Europe rises like a phoenix from the ashes of the total destruction of WWII. Totalitarianisms, the death of millions of people, and ruined cities in Europe are narrated in this founding myth as a turning point in history and as the root cause and initial impetus to the development of the EU. Although the starting point of this myth is negative with its emphasis on extreme agony, violence, hatred, oppression, and injustice, the myth turns the legacy of this turning point into a positive ethos of conquering these negative extremes and promoting their positive opposites: freedom, justice, solidarity, and peace. The third storyline highlighting founding figures and key heroes functions as a mediator between these two mythical narratives.