How to Re-Enchant Europe

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Today, Europe suffers less from a lack of power than from a lack of imagination.

It regulates, funds, coordinates and negotiates. It produces standards, budgets and compromises. Yet it still struggles to inspire the emotional, symbolic and collective attachment that its historical ambition would seem to demand. The European Union often appears more as a space of administration than as a space of collective projection.

As the French philosopher Georges Balandier demonstrated, no political power can endure without a symbolic dimension. Power never rests solely on coercion or efficiency. It also requires staging — the ability to generate meaning, narratives and collective representations. In Le Pouvoir sur scènes, Balandier explains that every political order organises a form of political dramaturgy designed to render its existence both visible and legitimate.

This is precisely where one of the European Union’s deepest fragilities lies.

Europe’s problem is not only democratic

Much is often said about Europe’s “democratic deficit”. Yet the problem may run deeper: Europe also suffers from a symbolic deficit.

As several studies on European political communication have highlighted, the EU struggles to produce what Balandier described as a genuine staging of politics. European power appears fragmented, polycentric and diffuse. The Commission, the Council, the Parliament, the Member States: no single institution truly embodies a shared European narrative.

The Union functions as a highly sophisticated system of governance, but only rarely as a visible community of destiny.

This difficulty is reinforced by the very nature of the European project itself. Unlike nation-states, Europe cannot easily rely on the traditional foundations of political construction: a founding war, a common language, a unified national mythology or strong cultural centralisation. It must invent something different.

This may well be Europe’s great historical challenge: how to build a post-national political legitimacy without reproducing the excesses of traditional nationalism.

Re-enchanting without mythologising

Re-enchanting Europe does not mean artificially constructing a European civic religion or producing emotional propaganda. It means restoring symbolic depth to the European project.

Europe nevertheless possesses immense resources. It is the historical space in which modern democracy, the rule of law, universities, the Enlightenment, social protection, critical thought and a certain conception of human dignity emerged and developed. It also represents a geopolitical singularity: an unprecedented attempt to transcend traditional imperial logics through voluntary integration.

Yet these achievements are too often presented in a technocratic and defensive manner.

Re-enchanting Europe would instead require reconnecting the Union to broader imaginaries: civilisation, transmission, exploration, culture, science, ecology, technological sovereignty, space and the protection of living systems. Europe must once again become a project of historical projection.

Towards a European symbolism of movement

Europe would benefit from developing a symbolism of movement rather than one based on traditional conceptions of power. Its true uniqueness may lie precisely there: not in uniformity, but in the capacity to organise circulation between peoples, cultures and interests without dissolving them. A Europe built on connections rather than centralisation.

This also requires reinvesting in certain European political rituals: major speeches, ceremonies, shared cultural events, ambitious scientific programmes, highly visible infrastructure projects, and common technological or space ambitions.

Even advanced liberal democracies require forms of embodiment.

Some concrete ways to re-enchant Europe

European re-enchantment cannot rely on speeches alone. It requires visible achievements, collective experiences and embodied symbols. Several concrete initiatives could help restore emotional and political depth to the European project.

Create major visible European projects

Europe often remains abstract because its achievements are insufficiently visible in everyday life. Airbus remains one of the rare examples of a European success immediately recognisable to the public.

The Union could launch new flagship projects capable of inspiring collective pride:

• an ambitious European crewed space programme;
• a major European artificial intelligence infrastructure;
• ultra-high-speed rail networks linking European capitals;
• a “professional Erasmus” programme for European workers;
• a sovereign European cloud infrastructure visible to the wider public.

Citizens become more attached to what they can see, use and experience directly.

Reinvent European rituals

Every political community relies on collective rituals. Europe already possesses symbols — Europe Day, the European anthem, the blue flag with golden stars — yet these remain relatively weak because they are not deeply invested with emotion.

Why not imagine:

• a major annual European ceremony broadcast across all Member States;
• shared commemorations of defining moments in European history;
• travelling pan-European cultural events;
• a “European Capital of Science and Technology” alongside the cultural capitals;
• simultaneous civic debates organised in universities across the continent.

Politics requires rhythms, milestones and forms of staging in order to endure over time.

Produce a more embodied European narrative

The European Union too often communicates through the language of compliance, procedures and funding mechanisms. It should instead tell more human stories.

European programmes are already filled with powerful individual trajectories:

• Erasmus students;
• researchers;
• entrepreneurs;
• artists;
• scientists;
• citizens involved in cross-border initiatives.

Europe should become a generator of narratives. Not merely through traditional institutional communication, but through a genuine civilisational narrative capable of showing what it concretely means to live, move, create and cooperate within a European space.

Restore an aesthetic dimension to Europe

Re-enchantment also passes through aesthetics. Great political constructions have always produced artistic, architectural and symbolic forms. Contemporary Europe often suffers from a lack of visual embodiment.

Why not invest more heavily in:

• emblematic European public spaces;
• more ambitious institutional architecture;
• European public artworks;
• transnational cultural festivals;
• large-scale European audiovisual productions.

Collective imaginaries are also shaped through images, places and emotions.

Embrace a European vision of the future

Finally, Europe must cease to appear solely as a regulatory or protective power. It must once again become a projecting power.

In fields such as:

• ecology;
• healthcare;
• artificial intelligence;
• space;
• biotechnology;
• education;
• culture;

the Union could offer a model of modernity distinct from both American technological capitalism and Chinese authoritarian capitalism.

European re-enchantment may depend less on returning to an idealised past than on the capacity to offer a desirable vision of the future. Peoples rarely rally around mere administration. They are far more likely to embrace a collective adventure capable of providing direction, meaning and a shared historical horizon.