An important part of the drawn-out crisis of European integration is the challenge to older normative narratives, which justified integration as a peace project or as the creation of a group of ‘founding fathers’. In order to oppose membership of the EU or Euro, or further ‘deepening’ or ‘widening’ of integration, new counter-narratives represent ‘Brussels’ as a bureaucratic monster that serves capitalist or statist interests or seeks to destroy proud consolidated nation-states.

The panelists all present papers with a transnational scope, examining narratives that traverse borders. Narratives of Europe, just like those of its component nations, draw for example on broader categories such as Christianity, modernity, civilization or the West. The panelists are also determined to locate narratives in the social context of institutions, individuals or networks that create, disseminate and debate them.