Competing and Commiserating Images of the Political-Self at the Local, National and Supranational Level: Memory, History, and Identity Making through the European Capitals of Culture

Since 1985 the European Capitals of Culture program has become one of the most successful initiatives of the EU project. With the millennial turn it has become a vehicle for the communal crafting of a broadly defined common identity while also serving to haze out the shared contours of Europe itself. As it relies on the input of actors at all levels and across fields the ECOC program has pulled away from the interventionist image many have of the EU Commission and its agents and has become a distinct example of expressed localism within a European context. Looking at a select number of post-2000 ECOCs the manner of their selection, the details of their particular cultural event/expression, and post-ECOC event-analysis, I detail how the project has become a way for the EU to express a localized supranationalism while also delimiting the boundaries of a shared European experience.