Uses of Peace in the Identity Construction of the European Union

The process of EU-integration started after the Second World War with the aim of preventing new wars, and peace is mentioned as a core value of the European Union in the official EU-discourses still today. This presentation investigates how peace is used to build a collective identity for the EU-Europe in the cultural heritage policy of the European Union. The focus is on the European Heritage Label (EHL), the most recent instrument in the EUs cultural heritage policy, and, more particularly on three sites that have received the label: the Peace Palace of the Hague in the Netherlands, an archive and documentation centre Mundaneum in Belgium and the sites of the peace of Westphalia in Germany. The paper explores the ways of telling the ‘European grand narrative’ of peace in the selected sites. The material consists of the policy documents, panel reports including the justifications for awarding the EHL as well as websites and brochures of the three sites. The material will be analysed through the conceptual approach focusing on uses, meanings and articulations of the concept of peace, paying particular attention to the links made between peace and Europe. The idea of the European integration has been to construct a ‘borderless Europe’. However, in the identity politics of the European Union, like in the identity building processes always, demarcations are constantly made. This paper therefore analyses whose heritage is seen as ‘European’ and who are ‘we Europeans’ and who are others in the EUs cultural heritage policy. The “dissonant heritage” (Turnbridge and Ashworth 1996) of peace will be discussed in the paper by asking how is war present on these cultural heritage sites and whose peace is remembered. In the official documents of the European Union, peace is discussed as a value and as an attribute that would characterise the entire EU-Europe. By analysing the three EHL sites, the paper will explore how Europe is represented as a place of peace on each site and what kind of similarities, differences and controversies can be read in the discussions related to the three sites. While peace is often discussed as a general and abstract value, in the context of the European Heritage Label, it is pinpointed to concrete places. The paper thus seeks to analyse the “memory complex” (Macdonald 2013) related to peace: how both the material, concrete, physical and practical aspects and the abstract and imagined aspects of peace are present in the selected sites.