Contenu du sommaire : D'une "mémoire européenne" à l'européanisation de la "mémoire"

European Memory in Action. Actors, issues and methods of mobilizing the past as a political resource for the EU. The use of memory as a political resource by European institutions is not necessarily an example of the creation of a founding myth on the model of the nation state. While the search for a “grand narrative” is clearly one motivation for the actors, it coexists with strategies aiming at other types of legitimation or which pursue short-term interests. The increased importance of European memory thus does not mean an end to fairy-tale versions of national histories. A European memory can propose alternative projects, drawing on the worlds of national imaginations in order to step beyond them or rework them. In this article, three scenarios observable when European memory is invoked are illustrated by a case study. The first scenario is the Europeanization : European institutions play a part in developing historical sites of national importance into “European sites of memory” ; the second is the articulation of a specific memory of the process of European integration : this takes the form not only of support to networks of historians specialising in European integration after 1945, but also of promoting a “grand history” of Europe over the long period ; the third takes the form of an explicit ambition to endow the EU with a grand narrative of its origins, one autonomous of national histories. The debate on the Christian heritage of Europe begun during the constitutional treaty process is a concrete application of this.

The article aims to generate insights for further work on the legitimacy of politics in the European Union. Through an analysis of European newspapers, we examine and compare practices of memorializing the dates of two key events in the history of the European Union: the declaration by Robert Schuman on May 9 1950, and the signing of the Treaties of Rome on March 25 1957. The analysis traces the role of symbols and the unfolding of a collective memory around these dates over a time-span of six decades. The article's preliminary findings show that the Treaties are increasingly becoming the focus of a ritual of remembrance that can offer an anchor for “European memory.” That is, the Treaties are regarded as a focal point of the past that informs the present and future of EU integration through the manner in which they play out in justifications of the policy-process. By contrast – and surprisingly – the Schuman Speech does not seem to be an important retrospective point of reference as yet, even though it is part of the official set of symbols of the Union. In general, practices of commemoration have become more inclusive over time: in addition to political elites they increasingly involve citizens as well. It remains to be seen, however, whether the events positively resonate with citizens in the long-run.

Political uses of the museum at the European level. Contribution to the analysis of the Europeanization of memory as a category of public action. This article is based on the findings of a socio-historical and ethnographic study carried out between 2004 and 2010 and focusing on the “Museums of Europe” that have emerged in several Western European countries since the late 1980s. These new museums, that are devoted in an unprecedented way to the history and culture of Europe and that are built in part for identity purposes could be designed as “agents of European consciousness” (Shore, 2000). In this museums the idea of a “European past” is plenty mobilized. This process is considered crucial to establish a European memory, which is itself deemed necessary to build the European identity. Then it is necessary to examine how the museum as a tool is now exploited for political uses of the past beyond the nation-state framework and to understand who decides to do so. “By analysing the links between the ‘museums of Europe‘ and the polical uses of the past developing at the European and EU scale“(Gensburger, 2008 ; Lavabre, 2008), this article contributes to shed light on the processes the europeanisation of memory (memory europeanisation) as a category of public action.

“Overcoming Trianon” : the transformations of Hungarian nationalism, form “nation policy” to the protection of minority rights in the European Union. Since the end of the Cold War, major European organizations (the European Union and the Council of Europe) have changed their handling of history and implemented memory-related policies that sought to answer numerous demands of recognition of”painful pasts”. This article analyses the logics of this Europeanization of memory issues by looking at the mobilizations of political actors who use the positions they simultaneously occupy in several social spaces in order to put memory conflicts on the EU's agenda. The demonstration is based on a case study – the 2001 law on the status of the Hungarians living in neighboring countries and its recent developments – that illustrates how a bilateral dispute can be turned into a “European problem”. It also shows that the mediation of European organizations, instead of solving this conflict, has altered the discursive tools used by the parties involved, thereby fuelling a process of consolidation of a controversial legal category, that of “national minority”, in EU Treaties.

The Victims of Terrorism : Heroes of Europe? The range and limits of the European Day in Remembrance of Victims of Terrorism. This article, which is designed as a contribution to the study of relations between European memory policies and processes of identification with Europe, focuses on the case of the “European day in memory of the victims of terrorism”, celebrated each year on March 11 since the terrorist attacks of 2004 in Madrid. The adoption of this day of commemoration is first analysed as the result of the opening of a “window of opportunity” in the post-September 11, 2001 context. Then, the author studies more specifically the role played in this context by the “rise in generality” at the European level of the cause of victims of ETA, relayed by elected representatives of the European people's Party, in order to understand why this day seems to comply with the model of the commemoration of the “dead for the country”. However, the limitations of the implementation of this day outside of Spain attest that this model is not able to be established effectively at the European level. Instead of a memorial ritual striving to maintain the memory of the reactions of solidarity in Europe to the attacks in Madrid in 2004 and thus strengthen the European identity, this day of commemoration must therefore be regarded as a mere instrument for a policy aiming at the recognition of victims.

The EuroBroadMap project : visions of Europe in the world
Funded by the European commission in the FP7, the EuroBroadMap project aims to determine how the representation of Europe varies around the world, mainly thanks to the analysis to mental maps made by thousands of students in 18 world countries.