"European Values": Unity or Conflict-Maker?

Abstract

The "democratic deficit" is more and more understood as a "value deficit" threatening the sustainability of European integration and preventing from gaining support from the citizens. Values were originally thought as a solution but have more and more become the problem. The EU is relatively united to advocate its values and subsequent norms to be exported abroad, significantly less on the ground when the time comes for implementation in external action. The block is even much more divided about the definition, contend and role of values in domestic politics. Competition and conflicts take place at elite level for the ownership of “European values” as a symbolic resource to be used in a top-down logic to justify the European polity and policies. Meanwhile, in a bottom-up perspective, some values have created cultural and social backlash, fueled resistances to some European policies or clashed with counter-values and may even create divisions threatening the very existence of the European political community. Normative fights highlight tensions between different discursive repertoires (legal, technocratic, expert, emotional or populist ones). The panel addresses the role, effects and meanings of values at the crossroads of politics, culture, market and law. It documents the circulation and shaping of values between the different spheres of the European multi-level governance (local, national, supranational, transnational). It investigates the EU as a container of values politics as well as its interactions with external entities (Council of Europe, UN, rest of the world). A secondary purpose is to map the research using values as an exploratory framework of wider transformations of politics, policies and polities in Europe. The panel is constituted by a theoretical paper and three case studies related to policy sectors that are either interests- or values-based to assess commonalities and differences in the political logics at work: culture, trade, morality politics.

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