The European Parliament and memory politics
Ana Milošević (KU Leuven) and Philippe Perchoc (EPRS / Louvain)
Deadline for proposals: 30 September 2018
Notification of acceptance: 30 October 2018
Over the last three decades supranational institutions such as the European Union (EU) or
the Council of Europe (CoE) have been increasingly building a transnational view of the past.
Their incremental production of memory policies and public remembrance has boosted
interest in transnational character of memory, its actors, practices and discourses and
relatedness to the EU legitimacy and EU identity building.
This special issue aims to investigate the role of the European Parliament (EP) in
transnational memory politics at the EU level. Drawing from the Europeanisation theory,
debates about politicization of the assembly and contributions from memory studies, this issue
will examine construction, institutionalisation and diffusion of EU memory politics focusing
on the agency of European Parliament. In the past, scholars have devoted attention, inter alia
to the creation of European narratives in the EP, the effects of the enlargements, the
comparison with other transnational parliaments like the Parliamentary assembly of the
Council of Europe, the installation of physical European “lieux de mémoires”, the
politicization of the debates over memory, the evaluation of the communist past of Central
Europe or the Holocaust.
Our aim is to gather a broad and up-to-date evaluation of these research streams and to take
stock of the current research at the crossroad of memory and European studies.
We welcome proposals that will provide in-depth analysis on the following themes:
the EP as norm-setter and memory entrepreneur of a shared European memory
(Europeanisation of memory politics: memory as a tool in IR; memory as a human
right)
the EP, its actors (MEPs, formal and informal groups, political groups), national
delegations and mediating (f)actors in the EP (e.g. civil society, research institutes,
victims’ groups)
the interplay of memory and party politics in the EP
construction of EP memory framework (1979-2019) and the EU Enlargement
(legislating on the past of member-states and non-EU countries)
the EP and memorialisation (European commemorations, monument building,
museums).
The scope of this issue is to unravel complex dynamics behind the construction of EU memory
politics and to bring some clarity on the role of the EP in these processes.
Submission instructions
Please submit proposals for papers in the form of a 500-word abstract with a short biography
to ana.milosevic@kuleuven.be AND philippe.perchoc@uclouvain.be