Constructing the EU as a Policy Entrepreneur: The Roots of European Identity

This chapter explores the evolution of the EU’s self-image as a normative entrepreneur—what it sees as good and successful in its own creation—which should be exported as the model of society to which others should aspire. This provides the context for examining the extent to which the EU’s foreign policy in Southern Mediterranean Countries is, as the EU claims, designed to support the export of this successful model. Our analysis shows that the EU’s contemporary narrative about achieving peace and prosperity in post–World War II Europe leans heavily on values and on development driven by market liberalisation. By contrast, however, its history has been driven by regional economic integration and Keynesian macroeconomics. Analogously, while the EU’s self-image has remained social democratic and much is made of the ‘European Social Model’, in practice this has been steadily eroded—albeit to varying degrees—for at least three decades.