Values in European Politics: Uses, Agency and Limits

References to values may have three incentives. Firstly, it may be a call to identity, memory and communicative resources in a quest for legitimization (governing through values). Secondly, it may come from the necessity to deal with ethical issues calling for normative policy choices (governing values). Thirdly, values may cause legal and political conflicts and challenge established balances of powers and regulation (governed by values). The purpose is to develop more specifically the third incentive (governed by values) and to emphasize the competitive and/or conflictual dimension of “European values”. The research investigates the labeling of political arguments as "values"; the incentives to use such a repertoire of action; the content and meaning of these values, how and why they are used. A leading hypothesis is that values are an answer to the generalization of "risk politics", to face uncertainties about deliverables of public action, implementation of fundamental rights, and quest for legitimization, identity and memory questions. However, values have increasingly created uncertainties on their own due to oppositions on their content. The EU is no exception as these trends exist at national level in the member states as well. But controversies are raging all the more at the supranational level regarding the absence of strong European identity and political tradition to frame and contain dissensus. The EU appears as the maximization of these political evolutions, a paradigmatic "risk polity".