OF AN ACCESSION
I was first nudged in this direction of inquiry when I noticed a curious contradiction. Take a look at the iconography of the European Union. On the Euro banknotes, what dominates are images of architectural apertures: gates, windows, bridges.8 The front side of the Euro coins display stylized cartographic images of Europe and in some cases other parts of the globe next to Europe.9 Above the map of Europe float the twelve stars arranged in a circle—the EU’s symbol—creating a halo effect that also expresses an idea of unity: all these once belligerent nations joined under one (starry) sky. The European Union’s self-representation shows a strong resemblance to the pictures associated with globalization. Google’s image search for the term “globalization” yields a predominance of pictures of the globe itself, with various icons of flows, networks, and brands superimposed on them. Such cartographic images juxtaposed with symbols of connectedness express a certain desire, if not promise, of a particular type of freedom. This is the freedom that results from transcending time and place, mostly the latter: a metaphorical liftoff from the ground, specifically the gritty, bumpy terrain of localities and nation-states and the physical constraints of the particular—altogether a freedom from matter.
“Will pig slaughter conform to EU laws? Yes.” A poster encouraging Hungarians to vote in favor of Hungary’s accession to the European Union in the 2003 referendum.
“Can we keep eating poppy seed dumplings? Yes.” A poster encouraging Hungarians to vote in favor of Hungary’s accession to the EU.
“Can I open a pastry shop in Vienna? Yes.” A poster encouraging Hungarians to vote in favor of Hungary’s accession to the EU.
Yet when Hungary and Romania were about to join the European Union—in 2004 and 2007, respectively—the images that accompanied these momentous events were of a strikingly different type. One set was presented on the posters encouraging Hungarians to vote affirmatively on their country’s EU accession in the 2003 referendum.
What is the message of these posters? At the very least we can say that there was an intention of humor or at least levity, as was the case in the other official pro-EU campaign materials, pamphlets, TV shows, and ads. The humor in the official materials, however, was interpreted as poking fun at, if not ridiculing as trivial, certain concerns about EU membership. Worries about foreign land ownership, labor mobility, or the future of national culture were certainly legitimate and were often raised, but officials rarely if ever responded to them in public with factual arguments. From my observations of the campaign and of the debates on various Internet fora prior to the referendum, it became clear that rational discussion or deliberation was never the intention of elected officials and the experts working on the accession. Nor could this have happened, since the information on which to base arguments was unavailable even to the most engaged citizens. The text of the agreement between Hungary and the EU that contained the conditionalities of the country’s membership, several hundred pages of legalese, was not even publicized—if by that one means posted online—until a few days before the referendum.
Another aspect of these posters, however, is more significant: the overwhelming food imagery and concerns about various EU regulations concerning the safety, quality, and ethics of commodities (yes, including that of condoms).10 This was certainly contradictory to my expectations. The European Union, and before it the European Community, has always argued that its main objectives are to prevent another war in Europe and to promote democracy and human rights. That is, the EU is supposed to be about big and lofty things, not little and mundane ones like sausage or poppy seed dumplings. The benevolent interpretation of the campaign’s focus on the latter is that officials were trying to address concerns about the future of Hungarian agriculture head-on, since those were the ones most often voiced by both skeptics and opponents of the accession. But even the question about capital mobility—“Can I open a pastry shop in Vienna?”—used food-related imagery (a slice of pastry), which suggests that the creators of the campaign thought it a winning strategy to associate the EU with appetizing pictures, rather than with symbols of democracy or, in the case of capital mobility, with images of money and wealth. Is this because the Hungarians who needed convincing the most were likely to be more concerned with their bellies than with abstract civilizational values or entrepreneurial opportunities? While this might have characterized some of the campaign architects’ thinking, this is only a partial answer. To understand what else might have been at work in the iconography of the referendum campaign, let us look at a second set of images.
Most of these pictures come from images circulated in Hungarian and Romanian cyberspace. Many of them were in a slideshow distributed on the eve of Romania’s joining the EU (2007), bearing the title “Europe, here we come.” Others are from Hungarian web pages abounding with self-deprecating photos of the state of Hungarian society. Many capture the lack of intelligence of their compatriots or just the sheer absurdity of everyday life in a society where people try to muddle through.
(above and facing) Images from a slideshow titled “Europe, here we come” circulated on the web before Romania’s EU accession.
While the imagery of the Hungarian EU campaign represents a certain official version of the story of accession and as such is, so to speak, from above, and the second set of images contained in the virtually disseminated slideshow is unofficial and generated from below, they both stand in contrast with the EU’s self-representational iconography. These respective figured worlds epitomize a number of opposing values and ideas:
| big | small |
| ideal, ethereal | material |
| flow, connection | blockages, frictions |
| gaze from above | gaze from below |
| opening | closing |
| unity, order | discrepancy, chaos |
| magnanimity | small-mindedness, pettiness |
| juncture, seamlessly sutured | gap |
Why do the EU’s self-representional images stand in such striking contrast with the Hungarian (and Romanian) representations of the two countries’ relationship with the EU? It is certainly not the case that the former set expresses a pro-EU while the latter two an anti-EU stance. This is true as much for the official poster campaign as it is for the slideshow. The latter, after all, pokes fun not at the EU but at an eastern Europe that is still too messy, too stupid, and too poor to become truly European; this is an obvious endorsement of the European project.
It might also be appealing to treat the former as representing something universal and ideal—a kind of model—and the latter as revealing the inevitable messiness of its implementation—a local muddle. This association—of the universal with the ideal, the
