ABSTRACT

This chapter describes some of the problems impeding the development of an 'European, public discourse'. The material for the discussion includes extracts from debates in the German Lower House, the Hansard transcription of a House of Commons debate of June 1997, other German political statements and a series of German and English newspaper articles on the European issue. The utterances of both British and German politicians and journalists suggest that the very idea of 'Europe' is differently construed in the political cultures. Debates about Europe concern both its 'existence' and its size and shape. Once the negatively charged term Renationalisierung had been introduced into the debate, Chancellor Kohl was forced to repudiate criticism against him precisely 'in those termsby using the word himself. British commentators on the Cardiff Conference of Ministers in summer 1998 reported a general 'reassessment of the role of national governments and a concomitant critique of once fashionable federalism', as The Guardian put it of Blair's position.