PFUE 22 - How to do the history of the European Union?

An international conference organized by the French Embassy in the Czech Republic and the French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences (CEFRES), within the framework of the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
With:
- Dr. Constanze Itzel, Director of the House of European History, Brussels
- Dr. Laure Neumayer, Junior professor in political science, University of Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens
- Dr. Christian Ingrao, Director of research at CNRS
Moderated by Jérôme Heurtaux, CEFRES Director
Abstract of the conference :
In his press conference on December 9, 2021, on the occasion of the presentation of the priorities of the French Presidency of the European Union in 2022, the French President Emmanuel Macron proposed to "resume (...) major work on Europe’s history.“
From this proposition, a number of questions arose. If a history of Europe can indeed be conceived, how can we make room for the plurality of national histories, combine the episodes of the past and reconcile the stories of the victors and the vanquished of the same conflict in a common narrative? What is to be done with the unresolved conflicts and unhealed suffering ensuing from imperialism and tragedies of the Second World War, Nazism, Stalinism, and the numerous population displacements resulting from the ending conflicts and the shifting of the borders? How can such discrepancies be reduced and under what conditions can the construction of a common narrative be effective? What can we achieve from it? What could be, in the first instance, a common history of the European Union itself? How can we avoid teleology and integrate failures, trials and errors, crises, and Brexit into the historical narrative? For whom, finally, is a common narrative to be written?
To debate these questions, CEFRES and the French Embassy in the Czech Republic, within the framework of the French Presidency of the European Union, brought together personalities from the intellectual, cultural, academic and international expertise worlds, from France and Central Europe.
Date: 14 April 2022
Language: English
cefres.cz/en/e...