‘Europe Should Try to Make Its Diversity of Voices One of Its Strengths’

In your book, you describe the European idea as a political project involving highly diverse nation-states that are committed, at least on paper, to a shared set of values – a project that has often been declared obsolete already. Is Europe really in such bad shape?

We don’t think that Europe is in bad shape per se. What we have seen in recent years is that the pessimistic voices have simply become more audible. This was further reinforced, certainly, by COVID and the full-scale attack on Ukraine in 2022. But in our book, we show that there have always been competing and divergent conceptions of Europe, as well as tension between integration and disintegration. The talk of a shared 'set of values' neatly concealed this at times. This narrative of European unification and an EU that may even be on a journey towards becoming something similar to a nation-state has often blocked out the conflicts, but they did exist, even before the turning point of 2022. Hence the title Shades of Blue, because the different hues of European blue have always been there.

In an effort to find out which conceptions of Europe exist, you analysed thousands of newspaper articles from six case study countries. What made you choose the discourses in these countries’ national press as your point of access?

Our aim was to redress the balance in research, which until now has focused on elites, policy-makers and institutions, primarily the EU’s, and their reproduction of conceptions of Europe. We wanted to present a broad overview of the discourse while simultaneously assuming that the debate in the press is followed by a broader cross-section of the population and also reflects discussions that are taking place outside the media. For example, if there was something relevant on Twitter, a newspaper had to pick that up, simply because it helped to shape the discourse on what Europe actually means in the various countries. With our approach, we also want to make a contribution to survey-based research, which naturally considers conceptions of Europe as a background issue but rarely addresses them in more detail. For example, if Eurobarometer asks how strongly someone identifies with Europe (compared to their village or country), there is an assumption that the people who respond to this kind of question in a survey have some sort of image of Europe in their heads. And they do. But instead of finding out what exactly this image looks like and whether different respondents mean the same thing, it is often assumed that there is consensus and comparability. Our approach reveals where there are contradictions, how conceptions of Europe change over time, which political events explain these dynamics and also where there are similarities between countries. Our aim, with this book, is to help map this diversity in what Europe may actually mean in different European countries.

Historical memory is a key element of your approach to conceptions of Europe. Why does dealing with the past play such a major role?

This is very well-illustrated by the example of the EU’s Eastern enlargement. When the Baltics and East-Central European countries joined the EU in 2004, this round of accessions was buoyed up on a great wave of enthusiasm. For these countries, this step meant a return to Europe, a convergence of things that belong together. But that radically changed in subsequent years. In the wake of accession, Poland and other countries noticed how difficult it was for their own conceptions of Europe and European history to gain a hearing among the old EU member states. This is especially apparent if we look at remembrance of World War II. In Germany in particular, but also in other countries, a Holocaust-centred paradigm with its message 'Never again!' has developed; this has become a guiding element of international politics and a point of reference for society and is accompanied by recognition of the unique victim status of European Jews. This paradigm emerged at a time when the East-Central European states were not part of this discourse. In preparation for EU accession, it was now expected that these countries would participate in this Western European form of remembrance, even though they had played no role in creating it. This ultimately caused tensions, until the Baltics, Poland and other countries said: 'The Holocaust is one aspect, but we have our own history of suffering, which is also part of European history.'

In the book, we explore this issue as potentially Europe’s second 'founding myth'. If the first is the process of examining and dealing with the violence of World War II, especially the Holocaust, then the question which arises is whether the East-Central European countries will succeed in integrating a second founding myth into the European project, namely their own traumatic experiences with the violence of Stalinism and Soviet rule. For them, it is not the perspective of the victim paradigm and 'Never again!' that is at the forefront, but the narrative of heroic resistance, first against the fascists, then against the Red Army and finally against Soviet occupation or dominance. If we think about the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, for example, here we see a form of heroic remembrance that does not fit Franco-German perspectives on the Second World War. From this, we see how politically relevant these memory conflicts are, and how competing forms of memory emerge.

You have already mentioned Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine in 2022. What are the consequences of this watershed moment for conceptions of Europe?

Two consequences are particularly striking. The first is the clear delineation between Russia and Europe and, associated with this, the geographical shift in the mental map of Europe. The narrative that Europe extends from Lisbon to Vladivostok has been abandoned in most of the political discourses among Europe’s centre parties. Of course, critical voices were already gaining traction with the annexation of Crimea in 2014, but 2022 really was a breaking point in terms of the 'de-Europeanisation' of today’s Russia. Russia is now seen as the antithesis, and Russian history and culture are no longer viewed as part of a positively connoted Europe.

And on the other side, there is the relatively rapid Europeanisation of Ukraine, which until 2022 had more of an intermediate status, culturally, politically, but also historically. Since 2022, the media have been happily claiming that the heart of Europe beats in Kyiv. The heart metaphor was also deployed in earlier conflicts, such as the wars in Yugoslavia, in order to create powerful images of Europe. Here, Europeanisation is clearly the result of political decisions. If you look at the speeches by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, you’ll see that this is a motif that he utilises quite consciously. During the early phase of the war in particular, he often used historical references, and did so very elegantly. For example, he has drawn parallels between aspects of Ukrainian history and the Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974, the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany in 1989, the French Revolution in 1789 and British resistance in the Second World War. And in doing so, he makes it clear that for him, Ukraine has always been a European country historically as well.

What does Europe need to survive as a strong political community?

Above all, Europe must address the differences in the conceptions of Europe that exist among the various countries and learn to live with them. In our view, one of the major failings of the European project was the attempt to align Europe with the model of a nation-state and largely ignore these differences. The diversity of voices in Europe cannot be overcome, and we believe that Europe should try to let it be one of its strengths. The slogan 'United in Diversity' is good for printing on a sticker, but the real challenge is making it a lived reality, largely because the different conceptions of Europe are to some extent incompatible with each other. But we need this debate about recognition and perceptions of differences and it must be conducted at eye level. It’s important not to succumb to the temptation of claiming from a strong German position, for example: 'We know how to deal with a difficult past, so now please adopt exactly the same approach in Estonia.' It’s essential to link in with Estonian discourses and make space for the expectations vested in Europe and the other political demands that are articulated in the process. After all, there is a very different conception of Russia in Poland and Estonia than in Spain or France, for example. It would be the wrong move for Brussels or Luxembourg to try to impose a historical narrative on people in other parts of Europe. As we see it, dealing with these differences is the most promising way to maintain stability in Europe and is immensely important for a European project that enjoys broad social support.

The interviewer was Yvonne Troll, Communications Coordinator at ZOiS.

Félix Krawatzek is a political scientist at the Centre for East European and International Studies where he heads the 'Youth and Generational Change' Research Cluster.

Friedemann Pestel is a historian at the University of Tübingen, Germany.

Rieke Trimçev is a political theorist at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

Gregor Feindt is a historian at the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz and Associate Member of the Special Research Center on human differentiation at the University of Mainz.

Krawatzek, Félix; Pestel, Friedemann; Trimçev, Rieke; Feindt, Gregor. Shades of Blue: Claiming Europe in the Age of Disintegration. Cornell University Press, 2025.