The ‘Return to Europe’: Redefining ECE Political Identities after 1989

Abstract

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the new leaders of the ECE countries have called for a ‘return to Europe’. This was not only a symbolic declaration to celebrate the end of communist dictatorship. It also meant that there was a chance for the ECE nations to not only become sovereign, democratic states but also enter the European Community/EU and NATO in order to ensure stability and security for their new democracies. The metaphor of the ‘return to Europe’, understood as ‘a means of imagining and, by the same token, constructing social reality’ (Hülsse 2006: 397; see also Drulák 2004), has been largely used in political discourses and statements of ECE politicians after 1989. For Judy Batt, ‘the notion of “returning to Europe” usefully captures an essential fact of life in this region: the inseparability of the internal and external dimensions of politics’ (Batt 2007: 16).