The paper analyses consecutive narratives from key actors representing the European Union and identify the trajectory of a common template for their portrayal of the origin, dynamics and purpose of European integration. A three-step research design is applied which (1) maps Europeanist narrative(s); (2) identifies the structure of Europeanist narrative templates and (3) compare the templates across time and actors. The analysis demonstrates that (a) Europeanist portrayals of integration follows a highly institutionalised template, only varying marginally across time and according to party political origins of political leaderships and (b) that the Europeanist narrative template could contribute to the polarisation of EU politics, leading to apathy or the outright rejection of ‘the European project’.
