Meaning formation through constitutive dichotomies

possible extremes. Therefore, the uniqueness he ascribes to Europe mainly consists of its political organisation not being that of a state.

The reforms that should be made

The speakers’ proposals for reforms are all centred around the dichotomy of the national and the European, and the tension takes two forms: identification of and with the national and the European dimensions and the political organisation of them. Here, all speakers perceive a purely European identity and polity as a nonentity, and all present the nation-states as constitutive parts of Europe.

However, Europe and the EU are also viewed as unavoidable features of the individual nation-states’ reality, wherefore tensions between the European and the national levels have to be resolved through compromise rather than by opting for one of the two sides (see figure 29). The speakers handle the extremes in various ways, and they use distinct strategies to advocate their preferred solutions. Some seek to move the resulting entity off the scale by claiming that the mix of national and European features creates something new and unique. Others simply seek to strike a balance between the national and the European, but the aim of overcoming the tensions between the two extremes is common to all.

Blair Prodi

Lykketoft Aznar Jospin Fischer

National European

Intergovernmental Federal

Figure 29: The national/intergovernmental-European/federal scale and the speakers’ position¹⁹

particular national levels. Thus, the constitutive dichotomies enable the speakers to create new opportunities for political discussion and action on the basis of the nationally constrained positions from which they speak.

The speakers explain why there is a need for reform and thereby also justify the

existence of the debate; they attempt to set up the procedures for discussion and to delimit the issues to be discussed. In all of these efforts the constitutive dichotomies are essential tools. One of the central features shared by all of the speakers is the attempt to position both the process of debating and the resulting European political entity in a middle position. As a regional entity the EU is the geographical link between the nation-state and the world order, but – it is claimed – reforms are needed if it is to fulfil that function effectively. Also, the EU is in the middle of an enlargement process, and again reforms are needed if that process is to be concluded effectively. The need for reform, then, is basically argued on the premise that the EU has come halfway and further changes are needed to bring the project to its conclusion and to realise its full potential. The debate is positioned between the poles of substantial and procedural discussion, the idea being that both the EU’s ends and means must be considered and that the eventual reform must establish harmony between the two dimensions. Finally, the proposals for reform aim at balancing the national and European dimensions, wherefore they are situated between the extremes of intergovernmental and federal institutions and mechanisms.

The speakers advocate different solutions to the balancing exercise, and each utterance is a unique creation of meaning, but they all navigate the same conceptual space and use the same rhetorical strategies to establish their specific positions in the landscape. By placing himself within the debate on the future of Europe each speaker also sets his vision of the EU off from those presented by other participants in the debate. In so doing the speakers are constrained by existing expectations – some specifically national, others of general purport – as to the form and content of their utterances. One major strategy of identification is to adapt the utterance to the audience’s prior relationship with the European project and with other social entities. Notably, it is argued that the EU does not do damage to the nation-states, which are conceived as the audience’s primary point of reference, and the European unity is reinforced through reference to ‘others’ that are common to all the nations of Europe. Furthermore, the speakers seek to live up to expectations as to what issues should be dealt with and how these should be discussed. In this regard there is a high degree of intertextuality between the six speeches as well as other contributions that belong to the specific sub-genre of political leaders’ presentations of their positions in the debate.

The speakers use the audiences’ prior feelings about the EU and the existing

conventions concerning the form and content of their utterances creatively, thereby suggesting new meanings and changed relationships. For example, Lykketoft establishes a new relationship

between sceptical and pro-European positions by suggesting that both of these are internal to all of us. Fischer endows the notion of federation with a new meaning, when claiming that political integration into a European federation does not erase national identity, Jospin also redefines the concept by combining it with the notion of nation-states. The argumentative and figurative topoi are the means by which the speakers seek to create new and alter old common meanings and positions.

The various ways of negotiating incompatibilities and dissolving dilemmas all suggest the establishment of the EU as a new type of community – a third place.

To all the speakers the EU is a unique social and political entity, neither state nor international association, neither nation nor collection of strangers. The ultimate aim of all the speeches is to substantiate this third place, to endow it with a meaning that goes beyond the

enumeration of what it is not. In this regard the available and preferred topoi show their limitations:

the rhetorical strategies prove well suited to opening up the new, intermediary space, but the room remains rather empty, mostly populated in the negative sense of all that it is not. The

communicative constitution of the EU as a polity in its own right remains heavily dependent on the creation of conceptual relationships between the European polity and other political and social groupings that seem to be better defined and more stable.

Yet the vagueness of the meaning formation concerning the European entity may also be regarded as a strength. The loose construction implies that the EU is in a transient state and thereby facilitates acceptance of proposed changes. Furthermore, the somewhat ambiguous images that emerge from the utterances allow for general agreements to arise even if differences of specific opinions remain. All the speakers use the strategy of keeping references to other positions so abstract as to allow surface resemblances to pass uncontested, whereby a productive if unsubstantiated sense of commonality emerges.

Conducting the meaning formation at an abstract level facilitates the creation of consensus on the overall goals and the general directions of the European project and on the agenda and procedures of the debate about its future. On this basis it becomes possible to continue the discussion of specific points of disagreement, and the interlocutors may eventually move towards more substantial common understandings. The notion of the gradual build-up of consensus is supported by the speakers’ common conception of the temporal developments of both the debate

and the European project; the movement is one of continuous progress rather than abrupt leaps and radical change. Thus, the debate and the reforms are conceived as perpetuators of a smooth

transition that gradually moves the EU towards the fulfilment of its ends.

Finally, the constitutive dichotomies’ loose mediation between and blending of well-known, opposed positions allow the speakers to address specific national concerns and to participate in the project of creating common European meaning simultaneously. The speakers’ usage of

constitutive dichotomies to establish meanings that are common enough to facilitate a continued European dialogue and different enough to be adapted to the diverse expectations of nationally situated publics is a central feature of the debate on the future of Europe. This characteristic mode of meaning formation, the workings of which have been explained through the analysis of the speeches’ topoi, allows a general process of European debate to arise on the basis of diversified national positions. Moreover, the extensive use of constitutive dichotomies means divergences may persist in spite of the existence of the common process. National and European processes of

meaning formation are interrelated, but neither subsumes the other; rather, they are mutually

constitutive and recursive, they are established and altered in (re)productive tension with each other.