Conclusion: ‘Official Stories’ in Comparative Perspective—Different Ways to Narrate Belonging?

This concluding chapter reflects on the twelve official national EU narratives examined in this book. It looks at how governments originally sought to explain and justify their participation in the European Union, considers whether the subsequent ‘careers’ of national EU narratives have tended towards continuity or change, and compares the rationales for EU membership offered by the narratives, the self-image of the nation that governments seek to project, and the imaginaries of the EU that accompany them. It finds evidence of three clusters: official stories that favour a federalist Union; national EU narratives where commitment to membership is accompanied by a preference to limit the transfer of sovereignty to the EU; and a third category that lay claim to European identity, but regard the EU as increasingly hostile. The chapter argues that the differences between narratives are evidence less of a ‘constraining dissensus’ that has stalled the EU’s development than of a ‘normalisation’ of EU politics. It concludes that, as long as national EU narratives stress the importance of the EU, the differences between them pose less of a threat to the EU’s present and future than is sometimes claimed and that national EU narratives are more important to fostering collective belonging than the construction of a master European narrative.