One of the results of Jose Manuel Barroso’s two-term presidency of the European Commission has been the turning of the “United States of Europe (USE),” “democratic federation of states,” “European family,” “house of the European family,” and “irreversible euro” into “symbolic taboos.” From Ian Manners’s perspective, “symbolic taboos” include those phrases and sayings that are instantly recognizable as the central discourse around which EU politics and policies revolve; they provide a series of inviolable and sacrosanct understandings about what the EU is and what it does (2006). The USE, already a heartfelt desire of many intellectuals and policy-makers in the twentieth century and which was a vision that had been triumphant at the level of political imagination but had always failed to become institutionalized, has reemerged as a powerful state of expectation. The United States of Europe is portrayed as a political utopia with strong mythical connotations. Its advocates are driven by the (omnipotent) fantasy of constructing an idyllic community and by the desire to return to the (fantasized) golden age. Their plans are disguised cosmogonic projects: Eurofederalists strive to repeat the moment of creation by transforming Chaos into Cosmos and also to be recognized as founding fathers of a new European democracy. The word crisis comes from a Latin word cerno that means “to separate.” Following the 2008 crisis (that caused the fragmentation of the European family into several separate pieces), the European Commission set out to create a “new faith” in order to help renew the principles of political life, form a European identity and (re)create Europe’s fantastic family. The supranational elite’s utopia turned into the official soteriology—a federation of nation-states came to be represented as the only salvation, the only way for Europeans to transcend the chaos provoked by the crisis and reconquer the lost idyll. If Europe is to avoid collapse and triumph over those forces that seek to bring back the past, says the mantra of the new political religion, it has no choice but to continue on the path of ever-closer union. The United States of Europe has become the sacred dogma that is to guide Europe’s new visionary leaders in their heroic trials toward redemption and assist citizens in leaving behind today’s overwhelming conditions. Turning the dream into reality has become a holy mission and a moral duty. The supranational elite have constructed a new symbolic world (made of myths, symbols, and rituals), giving the idea of the European community an awe-inspiring aura. European citizens are expected to cherish new dogmas: all need to participate in the single currency’s sanctification as the holy icon of the reborn European family, and all need to internalize the myth of a new, idyllic, federal Europe. The sacred truth of the rebirth and reunification of the intimate community cannot be questioned; the spirit of the cosmogony project cannot be broken.
To help the prophets of the federalist doctrine of salvation spread the creed and enlarge their community of believers, to build brand loyalty and transform united Europe into a legend, an idol, an object of adoration, and a cult obsession, the Norwegian Nobel Committee in 2012 awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union. The EU was sanctified for its triumph in the struggle for reconciliation, democracy, and human rights, and for helping to “transform most of Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace,” thereby representing a “fraternity between nations” (Nobel Prize 2012). In his speech, Commission president José Manuel Barroso expressed pride for those “European values” that “the EU promotes in order to make the world a better place for all” and for which “people all over the world aspire,” but in particular for the organization’s soft power that allowed for the reunification of most parts of the European continent (Barroso 2012c). The implicit message of the celebrations was that the EU, through its transformative power, had accomplished the European dream by reunifying the members of the European family (who were feeling more and more separated as a result of a series of traumas and disillusionments). The same power eliminated the remnants of the dark era of war, destruction, poverty, and fragmentation, allowing for the metamorphosis of the continent, and again turned Europe into the paradisiacal land of Cockaigne.
The European Commission has also done its part in the intimization, emotionalization, dramatization, and sacralization of European politics. Following the nineteenth-century model of nation-state building, it set out in the 1970s to invent new symbols for family membership and homecoming. In the following decades, it revisited its symbol repertoire, reformulated the concept of citizenship, and changed its communication strategies with the hope of solving the organization’s legitimacy crisis. In the mission of top-down identity manufacturing, the common currency came to play the role of the protagonist. The journey toward a federal Europe, based on a common monetary policy, became symbolic of an imminent individual and collective rebirth—Frenchmen’s, Greeks’, Danes’, and Germans’ transformation into en-lightened (and enlightening) “Europeans” and the Eurozone’s metamorphosis into a secure and cozy home. Yet the journey back to Europa’s maternal womb turned out to be much longer than expected. In an effort to expedite the process, European commissioner for communications, Margot Wallström, decided to change course. A new strategy was proposed to make the European home more intimate and attractive. A “fundamentally new approach” was adopted to make the “inhabitants of Planet Brussels more human” and easier to love (Wallström 2007). Wallström was resolute that the superficial American method—“Make up a slogan, double the advertising budget and come up with a nice campaign”—should be abandoned as a point of reference, opting instead for “a more difficult path of actually changing structures” (2007). She recognized that the lack of a European story lies at the heart of the EU’s problem of “emotional deficit.” Although understanding that the previous generations’ popular narrative of the peace argument was not sufficient anymore to fire Europeans’ imagination, the European commissioner for communications was not poetic enough to invent a new story for the “Erasmus generation.” A different route was proposed, but no compass was offered as a guide to the destination.
Europeans had to wait until Mario Draghi assumed the role of the superhero with determination to triumph where others had failed. For the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the construction of the house of the European family, he launched what he called a “new product”—the Europa series of euro banknotes—and propelled an advertising campaign to sell it to “Europeans.” Portraying the euro through the verbal and visual metaphor of the newborn child of the European family in 2002 was meant to help citizens give meaning to something difficult to grasp and attribute affects to something difficult to love. In a similar way, decorating the new euro series with the image of the Phoenician princess (Europe’s “founding mother”) in 2012 was intended to provide significance, hope, and healing in a painful period. This visual metaphor was supposed to offer people a secure and intimate shelter in the chaos of the European crisis and act as a compass for their individual and collective journey.
To transform Europeans’ passionless relationship with the euro into a magical love affair, the ECB president decided to blow life into a seemingly dead currency; to attribute a sense and desire to the inanimate euro; and turn it into a maiden with an irresistible seductive power and a mother that protects, nourishes, and is loved by all her children. By placing the image of “seductive Europa” on the new series of banknotes and transforming the euro into a female figure, he sought to make people accept the notion of the European family as part of their own universe and to kindle hope and faith in an imminent European transformation and rebirth. Yet citizens holding the new banknotes in their hands might decode the image in a different way. Most likely, the portrait in the hologram would remain unnoticed, and among those who would recognize the face of a female figure, only a very few would be able to link it to the Europa myth. To make sure that Europeans would get the message and make it their own, Draghi launched a new (only seemingly less aggressive) communication campaign. In order to convey to citizens the desired (encoded) message, to sell not just a new product but the meaning and connotations that producers attached to it, video ads were released with precise explanatory (both written and audio) texts. Following the central tenets of advertising strategy, these ads invite viewers to imagine themselves within the world of advertisement: the euro is “your money” (i.e., “seductive Europa” is also yours). They encourage