pacifist,” saying: “A day will come when … all you nations of the continent will merge, without losing your distinct qualities and your glorious individuality, in a close and higher unity to form a European brotherhood” (2012). She omits to mention, however, that besides couching his vision of a United States of Europe—“Let us be the same Republic, let us be the United States of Europe, let us be the continental federation, let us be European liberty, let us be universal peace!”—Hugo also expressed his belief in an exceptional Europe. As he emphasized, “the torch of Europe, that is to say of civilization, was first borne by Greece, who passed it on to Italy, who handed it on to France” (Hugo 1862/2007: 100). Greece, Italy, and France are portrayed as “divine, illuminating nations of scouts” that have to hand on the torch of life to Europe: “Books must cease to be exclusively French, Italian, German, Spanish, or English, and become European, I say more, human, if they are to correspond to the enlargement of civilization” (Hugo 1862/2007: 364).
For the prophets of palingenetic ultra-Europeanism, Hugo’s quest for European regeneration will be fulfilled by the Erasmus generation. The former vice-president of the European Commission harbors hopes that these students will see the emergence of the United States of Europe; they, as true (i.e., reborn) Europeans, will gain the right to enter the land of Canaan. At the same time, those who refuse to embark on the journey that leads to federal Europe, those who are not courageous enough to face the challenges and participate actively in the project of sacred metamorphosis, according to Reding, behave like “the devil at the sight of holy water” (2012). Ornamenting her discourse with this metaphor serves to add a spiritual dimension to her political agenda. In her imagination, the USE is the totem that sanctifies all those who come into contact with it; citizens who reject its blessing, refuse to take part in the rite of passage, to undergo through a transcendental metamorphosis a spiritual cleansing, a collective rebirth, and resurrection as true Europeans are necessarily those who made a pact with the devil. Implicit in the use of this image is the perceived superiority of federalists in respect to “others”—the holy water’s power overrides the strength of the devil. The USE possesses a sacred dimension: it helps people pass the threshold between profane and holy; it protects citizens against evil and allows for their adhesion to the community of faith. It is as if she asked her audience to make a signal of faith, to dip their fingers in the holy water and make the sign of the cross to indicate their membership in the community of believers, their adherence to the political religion of European federalism. It is as if she asked the Erasmus generation (which symbolizes, for the supranational elite, the “new Europeans”) to confirm their true European identity in a daily plebiscite, to be ready to renew their baptism and feel as though they are reborn Europeans day by day.
The belief that the United States of Europe represents the right dream to fire Europeans’ imagination, the right political religion to believe in, and that this political soteriology should be spread by leaders using a more poetic (heroic) language was confirmed by Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi. Speaking at the State of the Union in Florence, he launched a call to convince European leaders to abandon “the cold language of technocracy” and explain to people that a stronger and more cohesive Europe is the only solution to solve the problems of our time (Schianchi 2014). “For my children’s future,” he said, “I dream, think and work for the United States of Europe.” Renzi appealed to Europe’s “courageous leaders” to work toward transforming this dream into reality and to defeat those who threaten or fight against this heroic mission. He warned against the phantom of the past: if the enemies of the USE prevail, what has been built by the European family could be destroyed. The only solution, from his perspective, is to acknowledge that the EU is “an attractive adventure” and that it has “not only a common past but a common destiny, to which it is impossible to escape” (Schianchi 2014).
While the Treaty of Lisbon (approved in 2007 and implemented in 2009) consecrated the EU’s active role in the realm of culture, “drawing inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe” and promising to “respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity,” “ensure that Europe’s cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced,” and “promote culture and heritage conservation” (European Council 2007), “communicating Europe to people” has nonetheless remained an unsolved problem. European federalists’ enhanced efforts have been unsuccessful. Far from being powerful storytellers, they have failed to make the myth of a new Europe relevant, to make citizens internalize the sacred dogma of the United States of Europe as the promised land waiting at the end of the (linear) process of European integration. Barroso recognized that the myths, if left only to institutional actors to tell, would further alienate citizens, and on 23 April 2013 he made a call to artists, scientists, and intellectuals to write a “new narrative for Europe.” Aware of the fact that the old dogma of peace, prosperity, and unity no longer provoked in EU citizens a sacred gaze, he made an appeal to European intellectuals to write a new “book” narrating in a different way Europe’s present, past, and future. His nondeclared hope was that a new story of European palingenesis would enroll citizens (in particular the new generations) in the holy mission against populists, nationalists, and even Euroskeptics, who with their “pessimistic and destructive agenda” “threaten to destroy the dream made real.” He prompted them to endorse the federalist soteriology by putting an end to the “aberration of dealing with European issues at the national level” (Barroso 2013).
To make sure that the new storytellers would triumph in selling the federalist paradise dream, in enlarging the community of believers of the new doctrine of salvation, Barroso reverberates in his call the idea that culture represents the missing link in the realization of the cosmogony project. From his perspective, culture is supposed to make Europe’s founding fathers’ dream come true by giving birth to “a human enterprise which will promote peace and mark a major step forward for civilization.” To make the EU easier to imagine and to love, he discards the idea of Europe being technocratic or bureaucratic and instead attributes to it human characteristics: “Europe has a soul, and that soul is its civilization.” In his appeal, Barroso seems to demand that the new narrative be ceremonial and romanticized enough to raise awareness of the glorious nature of the EU, to “ensure that our citizens are inspired by the great achievements of European culture” (Barroso 2013).
The instructions were far too detailed and the encoded message was far too explicit for a true authentic debate (which in theory he was meant to encourage) to take place. “A New Narrative for Europe: The Mind and Body of Europe,” a manifesto written by a group of artists, writers, and scientists, seems to represent an enthusiastic endorsement of Barroso’s call (Cultural Committee 2014). Supranational policy-makers endorsed enthusiastically the new tale and, driven by their well-known frenzy, transformed the catchy four-page essay into an illegible 249-page book (European Commission 2015a). The plot of the story is the same offered by the institutional narrative—Europe’s rebirth. “A New Narrative for Europe: The Mind and Body of Europe” is also informed by a mythical understanding of the European Union and inspired by a cosmogony myth, but it is written in a different (more effective) style. The content of the European narrative has remained substantially the same; it still emphasizes the magic ability of Europe to transform chaos into order. The difference lies in its form (and arguably in its impact on people): while the old myth emphasizes more the traditional, the political, and the economic benefits Europeans can gain from the integration process, the new story has at its core the cultural and spiritual dimension; it makes the implicit mythological nature of the supranational project explicit.
Unlike Barroso, Europe’s new storytellers have pathos, logos, and ethos. To appeal to (young) Europeans’ hearts, thoughts, and fantasies, and to transport their readers in a new and special world, they use several (ancient) tools of persuasion—personification, a different punctuation of time, and rhetorical devices such as metaphors and tropes. In line with Barroso’s thinking, the European Union is represented with human attributes: it is endowed with a mind and a body; it can suffer, die, and even resurrect. As the narrative goes, in 1914 “Europe lost its soul”; in the era of Fascism and Nazism “it damned itself”; and after World War II, thanks to European values, ideals, and modus operandi, it gained “redemption”; “Europe’s soul was
