A Deleuzian Reading of EU's Enlargement

Deterritorialization and Europeanization: a Deleuzian Reading of EU’s Enlargement

Paper prepared for the 2nd annual ICPP conference, Milan Friday, July 3rd, “International relations meeting Critical Policy Studies” By

Marie-Eve BELANGER PhD [email protected] Visiting researcher GSI – Université de Genève Visiting Fellow – ETH Zurich

DRAFT, 1st version Comments and suggestions welcomed

Introduction

Despite appearances, territorial enlargement of the European Union is not circumstantial. Widening is not merely the result of the socialisation of elites, nor is it only the outcome of a successful political strategy: expansion is the geographical motion of generating the postwar European political space. For the European community, enlargement is neither optional nor conditional; it’s a necessity. Embedded in the European discursive system, the concept of territorial inclusion can be traced back to the Schuman declaration. This discourse constructs the community as “an organisation open to the participation of the other countries of

Europe” (Schuman, 1950). In the contemporary international system, the European order stands out, for it is shaping a political space beyond the paradigm of borders. The Schuman declaration represents the point of bifurcation – the singularity – from which the political community can peacefully expand beyond its borders; something unthinkable until then. In this narrative, the expansion is the celebration of the emancipation of politics from its dependence towards borders.

Over and over again.

This is what Gilles Deleuze refers to as a repetition: not adding “a second and a third time to the first”, but carrying “the first time to the ’nth’ power” (DR, 81). In this contribution, a critical analysis of the phenomenon of European territorial expansion will be performed through a deleuzian reading of the enlargement. This will be done in two separate and complementary parts.

First, the Schuman declaration will be analysed as a rupture point, a singularity. The declaration is the moment of the deterritorialization of politics: by providing grounds for the obsolescence of borders, it liberates the

European political space from its dialectical relation to a geographical limit. Simultaneously, the Schuman declaration reterritorializes this political space within the discursive structure of Europeanity. The Schuman declaration will thus be studied as the singularity territorializing the European political space, ordering it within the discourse. Second, the enlargement will be defined as the repetition of this Europeanity discourse as constructed within the Schuman declaration. Here, the enlargement is understood as the celebration of the

1 Note on titles abbreviations : DR: Différence et Répétition; MP: Mille Plateaux, AO: Anti-Œdipe.

Schuman declaration, that is to say, the rupture with the state order. The enlargement is understood as the repetition of the singularity of border transgression, the actualization of what Hannah Arendt calls a

“miracle2”.

The repetition of this movement creates an excess: an increasingly broadened and deepened European political space performed by a growing number of European political actors, in other words, the European Union. In the end, this means that the EU is not reducible neither to an unfinished political project nor a distorted state; its autonomous form must be recognized in order to be theorized.

How it all began

This Europe is set in motion by a promise made at the end of the Second World War. “Never again!” pledged the leaders of national failing institutions across Europe. Origin of the Europeanity discourse and symbol of the European will to restore peace on the continent, the “never again” vow holds a rather puzzling ellipsis: it is missing an object. This absence illustrates the emptiness of the political space in the postwar period. “Never again that”, four (unsaid) letters to hold absolutely everything unspeakable about the Second World War; that, the largest black hole ever invented in language, the end of the vocabulary, the smallest, the most indefinite of all signs to summarize the whole extent of a nameless horror, worse than war, worse than suffering, worse than death. That: something we dodged, something to prevent at any price. “World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it”, (Schuman,

1950, §1). That: a threat to Europe, a point beyond which there is no words. And if the discursive construction of the common, the surplus of meaning created by the intersubjective process where actors act and speak together in a common political space, then that represents the edge of this shared space. And precisely, one of the main characteristics of the Second World War is its complete negation of otherness: that is the place where neither common nor political space can exist, and where a systematic destruction of the other, the self, and the

2 The advent of the new, the unique, the different. “…each man is unique and with each birth, something uniquely new reaches the world” (Arendt, 1983, 234)

3 language occurs. Thus, that, the unspeakable, is the only excess generated by the Holocaust, and its only possible name.

“Never again” then, no more war. In the interstates’ system, war between states is more often than not linked to border transgressions3. War is incumbent to the state structure itself. In the Westphalian order a state’s first act is to “draw borders” (Schmitt, 1950) to create an exclusion nexus that clearly divides land and beings. The nation-state is the product of the desire to converge formal state building with a national “living space”

(Ratzel, 1988). The idea of finding the Lebensraum borders – as if they objectively existed – is indeed a strong motivation at the heart of the Second World War. It lead to the violent conquest of territories considered as necessary to national construction; war’s end marked the sudden halting of the nation’s spatial expansion.

Altogether, a nationalist narrative started to fade: “the European never again fits into a supranational construction of normative acts based on universal principles (...) on a continent that resolutely turned the page on “national destiny” (Pinto, 2010, 145). “Never again” encompasses the possibility of a common world beyond and in spite of the state; the Schuman declaration designs it.

The Schuman declaration as a singularity

Deleuze imagined the concept of singularity as central to the process of individuation, by opposition to that of representation (DR, 228). If representation is the static mediation system by which the world is accessed, singularity unveils the flow, the movement creating the infinite possibilities of alternate becomings. To the fixed account of dichotomies organising the world into a stable number of antagonistic categories, singularity opposes the potential of a fortuitous combination to deviate and create a new course of things. Singularities are immanent: their materialization is contingent on intersectionality between flow-production within the system. The movement instilled by the transformation of a singularity into a production machine is the coding of a new flow, from then on intertwined with other flows creating and organising this system. All singularities are possible at any given time, and they all remain possible through time. The storyline of an event is not straight, it constantly bifurcates on singularities, creating a specific path through the maze of becomings.

3 In the XXe century: First and Second World War

Neither circular nor linear, the spacio-temporality of events is constructed towards the future; it is the action of becoming, in this case a “becoming-European4” (see Mille Plateaux, 284 and following).

The Schuman declaration is a singularity insofar as it gives rise to the European machine. Machines are coding flow, that is to say, producing meaning (AO, 166). In this particular instance, the European machine produces the Europeanity discourse, creating the European community by way of recoding the common.

Europeanity discourse is the flow encoding the common as a denationalized form of collective political identification. This discourse’s possibility arouses at the end of the Second World War, when legitimacy of the state and its ability to regulate the collectivity failed to reproduce. In the aftermath of a war characterized by massive shock between nationalist agendas, the recoding of the common provided the necessary political space for social flow to be reinstated. To create this community, the rise of actors able to implement a political project, that is to say, to reactivate the possibility to share a common political narrative, was absolutely necessary on a literally speechless European continent.

And if this political project could no longer be achieved through state mediation, it is not because the state was failing or losing its legitimacy, although both were in progress; it was actually a physical impossibility. State reification became temporarily unenforceable because the use of state-related vocabulary was momentarily prohibited in the public space. This does not mean that people were forbidden to use words like “state”,

“country”, “nation” and “flag” on the European territory. Simply, that these words carried less and less potential for excess creation: their flows were fading. Little by little, state-centered terms gave way to signs that, shared across a new European intersubjective space, were gaining significance, generating a new discursive system: peace, common, joint, reconciliation, integration, to name but a few. This new European episteme produces the European excess, the European common and its political community. The excess translates into the construction of a European political space, a community of speakers dialoguing in European terms.

4 The process of "becoming-" is not one of imitation or analogy, it is generative of a new way of being that is a function of influences rather than resemblances. The process is one of removing the element from its original functions and bringing about new ones (http://www.rhizomes.net/issue5/poke/glossary.html)

The Schuman declaration was not the first discursive attempt to unite Europe; on the contrary, this idea had been recurring on European territory throughout history (Bitsch, 2004, 15). However, the EU was the first actual product of this European performative speech. Indeed, if the idea of a political Europe predates the

Schuman declaration, the conditions for its implementation had never been met before. The declaration marked the moment when the construction of the European polis entered the realm of possibility. It is precisely why it is so significant. From that point on, a European territory started to exist and to grow. By designing the Europeanity discourse, the Schuman declaration makes it possible for a becoming-European to structure the construction of the political order on the continent. From there, and in order to successfully trigger a reflection about this inductive take on the intersubjective nature of this political space’s creation, the discursive analysis of the deterritorialization and reterritorialization movement seems most appropriate; in line with the study of singularities, the territorialisation concept puts forward the possibility for a “becoming” to produce meaning thus opposing “metahistorical deployment of ideal meanings and indefinite teleology”

(Foucault, 1971, 142).

Deterritorialization and reterritorialization: Europeanizing the territory

The deterritorialization process is the act of liberating a conceptual space from a paradigmatic necessity, the movement by which a territory is deserted (MP, 634). Through this creative process, the seemingly unavoidable link between two spaces is discontinued, and the flow production is altered. Territorialisation is a double movement: once deterritorialized, the concept – the idea, the action – is reterritorialized, that is to say included in the flow production meaning of a different machine. This movement produces changes, alter combinations and gives rise to new meaning, new connexions. Before the Second World War and throughout the Westphalian era, political community are structured by borders: the existence of the state order relies on their implementation, their protection and the constant reproduction of the limits they clearly impose between two sovereignties. Conversely, the political design of the EU is achieved without reference to borders: not only is the European political order creation unchained from its relation to borders, the European space is specifically constructed through a process of borders insignification. How could this happen? Again, it starts with the Schuman declaration. Since the EU was built in intersubjective practice, the political community

6 found itself at the heart of European construction. Thus, the speech Schuman pronounced on May 9th 1950 introduced the structure of the story the European community tells about itself. And as Schuman managed to put the conditions for EU’s existence beyond the form of a national or international organisation, the declaration acquired its foundational status: it brought a change of episteme on the European continent which lead to a deterritorialization of its discursive system. Foucault defines the episteme as ‘the “apparatus” which makes possible the separation, not between truth and false, but between what may, and what may not be characterised as scientific’ (Foucault, 1980, 197). This is exactly why the state does not appear in the

Schuman declaration. The word ‘state’, just as the words ‘alliance’, ‘collaboration’, ‘patriot’, ‘flag’ and, most importantly ‘border’, have no place in the new European episteme because they do not resonate with the time of the “never again”.

It is fair to say that the new Europe Schuman calls for in the declaration is just as poorly defined. Yet, it is clear that its existence is already imagined as radically different from that of the state. The uniqueness of the

European order is not an intrinsic quality it possesses, nor is it disconnected from the historical context from which it emerged. In fact, the very possibility of implementing a borderless political order perfectly reflects the change in its conditions of possibility: “never again” will the state rule the construction of the European order. The Schuman declaration, analysed as the singularity that induced a change of episteme, allows the becoming-European to form the European community outside the state and, most importantly, outside the paradigm of borders.

If not within each of the states of which it is composed, where is Europe then? The community’s location is indeed central in the Schuman declaration, as its existence is defined not only in space, but also in time. ‘The coming together of the nations of Europe requires the elimination of the age-old opposition of France and

Germany. Any action taken must in the first place concern these two countries’ (Schuman, 1950). For centuries, the Franco-German border saw repeated outbursts of violence such as the Franco-Prussian war of

1870 and, more recently, the First and Second World Wars. The German and French states are invariably at the heart of European conflicts. Pacifying their border is a powerful symbolic act to inaugurate the new

European order. Not only are age-old borders conflicts resolved by the European construction, but the causes

7 for such conflicts – the existence of borders – is disintegrated and no longer relevant. Eliminating the possibility of a Franco-German conflict is an act of reconciliation preparing Europe for the dissolution of its internal borders. The falling of borders marks the emergence of a unifying discourse, the Europeanity discourse.

To the historically constructed geopolitical importance of the border dividing France and Germany, the

Schuman declaration opposes the becoming of a borderless community as a deterritorialization of politics. The

European community replaces the movement of power concentration within the state borders that kept leading states to war. And moreover, it is constructed as ‘open to the participation of other countries in Europe’

(Schuman, 1950), an invitation repeated not once, not twice, but five times in about 90 lines of the declaration.

If the European community first only includes France and Germany, the open nature of the European construction structurally compels it to expansion. The united Europe is designed to exceed the united territories of France and Germany; it already exceeds them in intention, in will and in the discourse.

Europeanization is thus established, fated to spread.

The structure of the Europeanization discourse originates from the Schuman declaration and the conditions of possibility of the community’s development are clearly established very early in the European narrative system. This structure opens, but also limits, the terms of the European construction (Foucault, 2003).

Schuman's discourse established political Europe on a common becoming: performing the growing space of peace. The subsequent implementation of European institutions and instruments will remain consistent with this objective.

Deterritorialization is the ephemeral result of a movement, an action: nothing deterritorializes itself, things deterritorialize each other (MP, 214). In European construction history, the Schuman declaration deterritorialized the common political space by way of insignificating state’s borders. In the same movement, it reterritorialized the political community on a new space – the same space – by creating a discourse – the

Europeanity discourse – within which it can grow both geographically and politically without being limited by state’s boundaries. States’ borders still exist on the European territory; they just don’t make sense in the

European construction process. This is not an evolutionary process leading to the construction of a “federal” or a “supranational” political object; it’s a new layer of meaning production, a new flow (MP, 627). The

Schuman declaration itself is also subjected to the deterritorialization/reterritorialization process: it is deterritorialized as a unilateral act from an obscure French foreign minister and reterritorialized as the

Founding Act of the European Construction pronounced by the Father of Europe. The Europeanity discourse is thus the act of deterritorializing the political community, and its reterritorialization is achieved through the repetition of this discourse, each time enlarging the community.

Repetition of the Europeanity discourse

According to ontological dualism, a repetition is a representation of the foundational form: to found is to initiate the possibility of infinite sensible repetitions (DR, 350). The foundational form lies at the origin, in the middle of the multiplying concentric circles of its copies. Its reflections and re-presentations and each of its repetitions are evaluated by analogy to the foundational idea. To found is to put in order, to determine the undetermined (DR, 352). On the contrary, for Deleuze, repetition is conceptualized as a way out of representation. In fact, Deleuze distinguishes two types of repetitions: the elementary, the repetition of the form, and the total, the repetition of the cause (DR, 367). They are opposed with regards to their account of the difference: the first is a repetition of the same, and difference is subtracted from it; the second includes the difference thus producing an excess. The first repetition is a succession of reproductions, imitations and representations of an essence, a foundation. The second produces a new center comprised of the totality to which is added the value of the difference. One is ordinary, the other is singular. Repetition is no longer a repetition of successive independent elements; it is a repetition of totalities, at various coexisting levels (DR,

114). This coexistence of the series prevents the imposition of a dialectic between the origin – the model – and the derived – the copy – and thus anchors repetition in difference5. Repetition is the “passage from general differences to the singular difference, from external differences to internal difference” (DR, 104). Repetition is thus an eternal return of difference, that is to say, a becoming.

5 In the ontology of difference, there is not unity at the origin, only difference. Being is becoming: everything that exists is becoming, it never is.

The becoming-European is always larger in the discourse than within its transitional and temporary limits.

With every repetition of enlargement, the EU activates a new political becoming, grounds for yet another repetition to come. The EU is not more or less “EU” with each enlargement: it’s not getting any closer to its final form, nor is it getting away from its supposed essence. Each moment of the EU is the EU: there is no ontological unity, no fixed account of EU’s identity. The EU is not becoming because it’s unfinished, it’s not becoming to an end however this end might be defined – i.e. a state, a federation, a confederation. The EU is not evolving towards a supranational model. Becoming-European – not being the EU – is precisely the repetition of the EU, each time different, without reference to an original. It is a becoming for its essence lies in the difference – the EU is not premised on the existence or the lack of existence of an EU essence.

The European Union is not repeated in a continuous and stable state: it is an act, changing and temporary, an ephemeral performance whose repetition is accompanied by the production of an excess of meaning6. The uninterrupted production of a surplus of space – widening – and of meaning – deepening – illustrates the transient nature of the European space. The European system is built by a discourse that spans across the history of European integration and enlargements, structuring the terms of territorial expansion and the development of integrated institutions. This discourse, the Europeanity discourse, is understood as “Europeans discussing collectively the conditions of living together” as an application of Arendt’s theory of action: it is in the political action – the production of a political discourse – that the political actor – the Europeans – and the political space – the European Community – can emerge (see Arendt 1983, 235). And throughout the

European construction history, this population has been growing and this space has been enlarging. What does that mean in terms of political order?

In search of a logic of enlargement

As imposed by the Schuman declaration, the European Union is constructed on the prohibition to draw borders. By adopting the shape prescribed by the Schuman declaration – a territory opened to all European countries – the EU condemns itself to enlargement. Notwithstanding its recursive nature and large success

6 Also see Derrida, 1979, 96.

10 rate, enlargement is perhaps the most neglected of the European integration and Europeanization phenomenon. Enlargement is most often attributed to a strategic policy from the state (intergovernmentalist theories) or from the EU (neo-functionalist theories), based on a cost-benefit calculation: when the benefits outweigh the costs to expand, an expansion procedure is instituted; otherwise, it is postponed (Moravcsik and

Vachudova, 2003). However, and quite remarkably, many studies conclude that a negative relationship between costs (considered high) and benefits (considered low) does not influence the decision of whether or not to extend the Union (Sjursen 2002, 497). In other words, although the “rationalist” hypothesis (put forward by the proponents of the intergovernmentalist approach to European integration) has been refuted, or at least seriously questioned, it does remain significant in the field of European enlargement studies. This perspective is often paralleled with a more inclusive neo-institutionalist approach stating that geographical or ideological proximity result in a transfer of standards and practices causing economic and political rapprochement, eventually leading to enlargement (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2002, 513). In any case, enlargement is not exactly seen as a political act in itself, but rather as the rational, strategic or historical consequence of a wanted, or natural reconciliation between states. Acknowledging the conceptual value of these approaches to study European policies, we try to go beyond the recognition of enlargement as a prominent case of external action (Lavenex and Schimmelfennig, 2009, 791) in order to capture its specificity and its role in the European order creation system. Enlargement is arguably the most important process to examine, in terms of appreciating the depth of the political transformations Europe has endured over the past

60 years.

The creation of a political Europe goes together with a resignification of state borders on European territory.

Naturally, any subsequent border implementation around this new political entity will be complicated by the fact that its double project – to preserve peace on the continent and to stay open to accession to all “European countries” (Schuman, 1950) – implies permanent territorial reconfiguration. Geographical transformations are conducted through political processes, that is to say, discursively. The EU does not set itself up with new borders after each enlargement: enlargement is the process of building a political space outside the idea of borders. Unlike the state, the EU is not conditioned or limited by borders. The uniqueness of the European construction is that the political territory it designs is never final and always becoming something different,

11 larger. This emancipates it from the sovereignty spillover problems created by the static permanence of state borders.

The centrality of EU’s enlargement in the foundation of a European political order can be characterized even more precisely: enlargement is the fulfillment of “never again”. The commitment to renounce interstate war requires abandoning the political domination of the state in favour of a different territorial order, emerging outside of the paradigm of frontiers. The whole territory remains inhabited, and the European space is still highly political. But territorial delimitation is kept deliberately vague. This imprecision is not a flaw in the

European edifice: it is a component of an order creation system that isn’t based on conquest, nor limited by an exclusive common, defined by its borders. To perform the “never again” requires the construction of an inclusive we in the unconstrained space of a borderless territory. As long as the possibility to expand will exist in the speech, use of war and the implementation of borders between states will be unthinkable and “never again” will be achieved.

Thus, EU’s enlargement lies at the heart of the narrative performing Europeanization. The Union aims to expand to the edge of Europeanity, that is to say, the borders of a European collective we, whose specificity is precisely in not having borders. This means enlargement of the European political territory, far beyond its anecdotal periodicity, plays a central role in understanding the community performance. Despite the almost uninterrupted succession of enlargements, the European community is always wider in the discourse than it is within its legal limits; this is precisely what distinguishes the Union from the state and embodies the superposition of the two layers of meaning.

If state borders must be constantly reaffirmed in order to activate their existence, EU’s borders are constantly reinvented, as are its limitations, within the discourse. And that discourse gives meaning to the European community’s creation: the political community exists to preserve peace. The enlargement discourse therefore reveals something important about this European community: its becoming-European relies on its ability to perform the “never again”. Already explicit in the Schuman declaration, the EU’s enlargement even pre-dates the Union. The specificity of the EU’s character will remain as long as the enlargement is still at the heart of

12 the community discourse. Indeed, if and when enlargement stops, the European system as it has been implemented can no longer work. Sentenced to reproduce state structures, the EU would witness the return of the friend/enemy distinction on either side of the border. As a result, competing sovereignties, exclusion and eventually war would resume.

Ultimately, EU’s expansion is not limited to its historical occurrences and it is precisely its transient nature that makes it relevant. Just like its primary components – territory, population and government – but also secondary attributes – currency, citizenship, language to name but a few – the EU is steadily growing, moving, changing. Enlargement is one of the few European processes that extends throughout the entire history of European integration and it is part of the definition of what the EU is: an open, inclusive political order.

Europeanity discourse and the enlargement

The expansion of the European territory is not done through “land appropriation” (Schmitt, 2008), a violent division of territory, annexation or conquest. The creation of the territorial and political space in the community is performed through the repetition of the Europeanity discourse. This discourse deterritorializes

“we” – the Europeans – from its dialectical relation to borders, and reterritorializes it within a becoming-

European (MP, 272). The construction and dissemination of this discourse marks a turning point in the way political territory is built. The community grows towards a becoming-peaceful, an intersubjectively developed will to eliminate the possibility of war on the European political space. The repetition of EU’s enlargement performs the European order as a growing peaceful space, and exceeds its periodicity: it has the effect of keeping the European territory open, and its borders unfixed. Borrowing from the “never again” pledge, the

European order construction is singular because it organises space sharing around inclusion rather than exclusion – borders. Becoming-European is also the peaceful repetition of the enlargement discourse.

The emergence of the Europeanity discourse is the singular moment from which the European political community is growing differentiated. Performed by Europeans building a common peaceful space, the

Europeanity discourse is constant in its form and proliferating in substance: it is exceeded by the forces

13 creating it. This is how it manages to produce a growing peaceful space while deepening political ties. The constancy of EU’s widening and deepening processes is an important indicator of the structuring quality of the

Europeanity discourse. To understand how this amounts to the creation of political order on the European territory, the content of this discourse must be studied: what are the words of Europe and how is their repetition building the EU?

The Europeanity discourse analysis serves two purposes: it first illustrates the emergence of its truth conditions7, the context in which the European construction becomes thinkable, and the origin of the European episteme. Second, it shows how the excess produced by this discourse leads to its differentiation and its repetition. In other words, the EU is nothing but the repetition and the expansion of this discourse: more and more Europeans collectively performing the conditions of living together; the becoming-European.

From the Schuman declaration, the European episteme defines the European community in four series: its origin, its becoming, its meaning and its space. In this discourse, the community originates from the desire to break the cycle of violence, its becoming is to unite Europe, its meaning is to preserve peace and its territory goes beyond national borders, differentiating from the Westphalian system. That’s how the community is said, that is the substance of the Europeanity discourse. From the interaction between these components is born the discursive structure organizing politics on the European continent since the end of World War II. It gave birth to the Europeanity discourse – Europeans speaking Europe – and its surplus – the European Community.

Europeanity is none other than the linking of these four series – origin becoming, meaning and space.

Here, references to the structure of Europeanity have been identified, analysed and compared within European discourses on enlargement. These discourses were studied through the question: what do Europeans say about the origin / becoming / meaning / space of the community when they talk about the enlargement? The idea was to trace the series of Europeanity back to the Schuman declaration and up again to contemporary discourses to determine if and how they did repeat, and what it meant for EU’s theorization. Discourse analysis establishes the series of space construction where Europeanity is said and shared. This Europeanity is

7 The condition of exteriority (Foucault, 2003, 55)

14 structured around the Schuman declaration and it performs a peaceful and inclusive political community. The existence of this community relies on the insignification of states’ borders; consequently, the boundaries of its political space are constantly expanding. This extension always first takes place within discourse before its excess can be geopolitically translated into the expansion of EU’s territory. The deconstruction of this

Europeanization process shows how the Schuman declaration inaugurates an era of peace by ridding the political community of its border constraints.

Following social discourse theory, (Angenot, 1988) discourse has an internal consistency: it is a reflection of the conditions of possibility of its episteme. Thus, any selected sample of speech is deemed to reflect the entirety of the rule forming the discursive order at any given time. In this study, Europeanity has been analysed in the discourses of the European Parliament, the most shared political space of this community. The analysis of the parliamentary debates on the issue of enlargement serves to underline the terms in which we speak “Europe” on the continent. Ultimately, tracing the content of the Europeanity discourse reveals how the creation of discursive excess leads to the repetitive deepening and widening of the European Community, performing this space as a “becoming-European” reluctant to objectification.

For the purpose of this study, comparative discourse analysis was performed on debates about the enlargement. The corpus consists of minutes from 48 European debates held in the European Parliament during plenary sessions for the enlargements of 1972, 1981, 1986, 1995, 2004 and 2007 more specifically between January 16, 1973 and March 14, 2012. They include each time the question of enlargement was scheduled on the agenda under the category “debates”. A sample of 14 speeches was selected among them in order to conduct this comparative analysis. These debates were those that took place during the period between the signing of the accession treaties, and the ratification of those treaties, an average of 1 to 2 years before each enlargement. The length of the debates varies between about 10 000 and 35 000 words. There are on average 60 occurrences of interventions related to the construction of Europeanity (that answers to questions related to the origin, the becoming, the meaning and the space of the community) per debate for around forty speakers, mainly from the parliament, but also from the commission and the council.

Results

This inductive analysis reconstructs the structure of the Europeanity discourse from content analysis. It shows a series of constants. With regards to the origin of the European community: it is always illustrated by the

Franco-German reconciliation and the reference to the “Founding Fathers”. “The community is expanding by opening its doors to three new members and thus carries the hope of its founders8” (1972). This rapidly turns into an opening of the borders between the two states, and then among all member states and farther and farther outwards from this center, evoking the idea of a “return” to an imagined European origin. Soon enough, foreign spaces are considered founding the European space: “Spain is a European country because without Spain and Portugal, European civilization would not be what it is”9, can be heard in the European

Parliament a little over six months before the actual accession of these countries in the “Europe” which they allegedly found. The becoming-European of Spain and Portugal is, in this case, influencing discourse about the European origin, which is a good example of how a becoming can be found at the origin.

The meaning of the European construction is also invariably illustrated by the will to preserve and to perpetuate peace. In the discourse, this is done through the deepening and the widening of political ties on the

European continent. Europe is the “exciting project of high civilization, a generous and democratic enterprise of solidarity and fraternity, social progress, freedom, mutual respect and peace10”.

Above all, the Europeanity discourse emulates a becoming-European: a political community characterized by the following features: it takes its origin in the will to break the cycle of violence and it is intended to preserve the peace by creating a political union open to all states wishing to participate. Enlargement to the neutral states is only the “premise of future enlargements11” as Austria, Finland and Sweden “complete (...) the wide circle of Western Europe, which will allow us to later include Prague, Warsaw and Budapest12”. Finally, the only thing that keeps this self-referential discourse to go around in circles is the excess generated by the intersubjective practice leading to enlargement: “there is no doubt that the EU will continue its vigorous

8 PE0 AP DE/1972 DE19730116-01, p.8 9 PE2 AP DE/1985 DE19850508-02, p.128 10 PE0 AP DE/1972 DE19720419-01, p.80 11 PE3 AP DE/1994 DE19940504-01, p.158 12 Ibid., p.164

16 expansion13” because “we need a continental destiny14”. In the Europeanity discourse, the EU is performed as an inclusive space, open to all European countries – to all countries becoming-European.

Table 1 synthesizes the Europeanity discourse as performed in the debates surrounding the enlargement processes over the past 45 years. It shows a combination of the continuity of a discourse that repeats from an expansion to another and the difference – the excess – of speech that is revealed in each new instance of enlargement. Europeanity discourse literally makes Europe grow, both horizontally – widening – and vertically – deepening. The meaning of European words is gaining in meaning throughout the enlargements thus building the Europeanity discursive system. Europeanity keeps reaching beyond its political and geographical space, which leads to the repetition of the widening and the deepening of the political European community, maintaining it in an everlasting state of becoming, allowing the internalization of its difference15.

Enlargement is never the expansion of the same, it’s always the expansion of both the excess and the exceed totality. Each enlargement celebrates the break with the state’s political border-based order, and goes beyond it.

Table 1 also shows how the Europeanity discourse prohibits the status quo, as it relies on the movement: the more Europeans discuss the conditions of living together, the more discursive space they are performing is expanding, both across space and time. The more space is included in the becoming-European, the more space is also included in the European origin. The same goes for deepening: it’s happening both towards the future and retroactively at the same time: this is not a linear, nor a circular process, it’s a diffusion process. This especially affects the enlargement theory: since the enlargement is taking place at any given time between formal enlargement processes, the latter cannot be considered as “cases” anymore. The enlargement is ongoing; it is a condition of the becoming-European. The enlargement might not constantly be happening in fact and yet, it is constantly happening in the discourse. In this sense, of all political actions by members of the

European community, enlargement is the one that best shows how the discourse structures the European order.

13 P6_CRE(2005)12-14(15), p.70 14 P6_CRE(2006)11-29(14), p.41 15 Principally with the statist form.

Table 1. Europeanization discourse throughout the European enlargements

Year Origin of the Becoming of the Meaning of the community Space of the community community community

1950 Reconciliation Open Peace Enlargement

1973 Founding fathers, Conceptually and To promote democracy, to Undifferentiated from Strasbourg, Roma geographically open protect liberty and peace ‘Europe’, enlargement is Treaty positive and political

1981 Founding fathers, Roma The enlargement is in The community must act Europe’s geography is a Treaty, The the nature of the politically to promote political matter, the enlargement marks a community and it is democracy, peace and enlargement is in fact a return to Europe linked with its the liberty return to Europe deepening 1986 Founding fathers, Roma The enlargement To establish a European Europe and the Treaty, return to Europe generates more people defending values of community are still and shared culture and europeanity which leads democracy, liberty and confused, the enlargement history to more political peace is a return to Europe integration

1995 Founding fathers and Enlargement and European people must act Europe and the Treaty, return to deepening are in fact the towards the preservation of community are still Europe, reuniting of same and one can’t exist peace, democracy and confused and getting democracies across the without the other liberty larger in the discourse continent 2004 Founding fathers and Enlargement is going at The community has a Europe, the European Treaty, unified past and a faster rate, the historical responsibility continent and the EU are reconciliation deepening goes far towards the values of peace, the same, the enlargement beyond the European democracy and liberty and it is a success for Europe institutions must promote European values

2007 The conclusion of the The enlargement and the There is a shared Europe, the European 5th enlargement, deepening of the responsibility in the success continent and the EU are reconciliation and community continue of the integration process the same, the enlargement reunification of the and the preservation of is a success continent European values

Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the European community expanded three times: 1972 (Denmark, Great

Britain and Ireland), 1980 (Greece) and 1986 (Spain and Portugal). Table 1 shows that discourse performing the first three enlargements remained constant despite the fact that they took place under widely varying historical and political conditions. This could indicate that the European discourse is not contingent, it is structural: it sets the pace of all European political acts, including enlargement. The Europeanity discourse creates a stable framework within which acceptable conceptions of what the European construction can achieve are designed. The EU is a political space opened to all European countries united in their desire to construct a peaceful political space where they can interact as a community. This community is performing a

18 political space characterized by its lack of border and its double movement of vertical and horizontal expansion.

The fourth, fifth and sixth enlargements of the European Community is the first series of territorial expansions following the transformation of the “European Community” in “European Union” in 1993, and also the first following German unification of 1991. These enlargements are performed in a well-established political space, where the repetition of expansion is the norm rather than the exception. Discourses around these enlargement show definite evidence of continuity, for example by putting an emphasis on the promotion of peace despite the fact that this peace – domestic – had already been established for 40 years. Europeanity discourse keeps stressing the importance of political deepening political, increasingly binding within

European treaties. With regards to the questions of the origin and the space, Europeanity discourse keep referring to the founding fathers and the reconciliation as historical origin as well as it keeps promoting the idea of future enlargements.

Thus, while the structure of the Europeanity discourse remains unchanged over time – the discourse continues to build in the same way around the four series of the origin, the becoming, the meaning and the space – the substance of this discourse continues to grow and to gain new meanings. This excess of meaning affects all facets of the discourse. The most interesting finding remains without a doubt that the constant expansion of the becoming of the community – a common and peaceful becoming – systematically goes together with the expansion of the origin of the community – also common and peaceful. This constructed past meets that constructed future in a movement forward rather that circular or linear, building the future through a reconstruction of the past. Only a common European past, be it invented later in time, entails a common

European future.

In all studied discourses, enlargement is described as a “return” to Europe. This European community is often described as a community of values, or a historical community. This seems to suggest that, somewhere in the past, there was indeed a European unity and that it is possible to politically reunite the continent as it once was. And yet, this unity cannot be found outside the discursive system since it is its creation. This past is

19 possible only within the boundaries of the Europeanity discourse. Similarly, the political space of the community, it’s becoming, is also always wider and deeper within the Europeanity discourse than in the formal geography of the community. Thus discourse invents and makes possible the repetition of these widening and deepening processes.

The words performing Europe remain surprisingly constant over the enlargements; it is their meaning that continues to gain significance, creating the discursive system making sense of the community. The EU exists in order to preserve peace on the continent. 60 years of peace have not changed this discourse. With the

Eastern European States membership, it's the end of the Cold War that is signed; with the accession of the states of the former Yugoslavia, it is the end of the war in the Balkans that is celebrated, and so on. The

Europeanity discourse continues to produce meaning and to structure European integration. This speech is not merely a receptacle filling with meaning until it overflows thereby creating a new entity. Rather, the intersubjective nature of this discourses’ construction produces the excess that characterizes it, that is to say constructs it as the becoming-European, is founding the community’s origin. This community aims to expand to europeanity’s borders, which also continue to expand over the integration of new territories in its discursive space. Accordingly, the European order is structurally constrained by the repetition of enlargement. Taking into account this difference means that the EU should not be reduced as an “unfinished” political object or a

“quasi-state” in its theorization. Acknowledging the “becoming-European” as a valid conception of the EU could lead to finding ways to theorize this European construction as an autonomous form of norm-creation, not a failed copy of the state.

***

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