ABSTRACT
The Berlin Declaration on the fiftieth anniversary of the Rome Treaty was the first relevant statement made since the rejection of the constitution in late May and early June. It was a declaration appealing to common European values such as freedom, human dignity, human rights, solidarity and subsidiarity. The value catalogue is not the only document that provokes doubts about any official awareness of a necessity to rewrite European history as a new point of departure for a European value discussion. Another illusion beside the imaginations attached to the nations of European culture deals with the concept of a European democracy. The urge to prepare homogeneous support for a European ideal that is somehow related to the institutions in Brussels is not a way to democracy. It is reminiscent of late-nineteenth-century politics of conservative integration in Europe that has been coined as official nationalism, referring to the top-down symbol production of nationalism welded to a political authority.
