Feeling European? The EU as an emotional community

ABSTRACT

This article explores the importance of emotions in the European Union (EU), highlighting their role in shaping the EU’s self-image as a foreign policy actor and promoting social cohesion through emotion norms. Emotion norms are shared feeling rules that underpin collective identities and experiences within a group. Focusing on grief as an example, the article explains how it shapes the EU as an emotional community. By analyzing the EU in this way, the study examines how emotion norms help members navigate norm violations. The findings enhance our understanding of the EU’s emotional dynamics, shedding light on the contested nature of solidarity and public discourse. The article also critically reflects on the relevance of grief in EU foreign policy, emphasizing the significance of emotions in shaping EU policy and offering insights into the role of emotion norms.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotions
• European Union (EU)
• foreign policy
• emotion norms
• grief
• solidarity

Introduction

The members of the European Union (EU) share an emotional history of grief and trauma linked to the Holocaust. Initially, the memory of the Holocaust played a minimal role in the formation of the EU. However, in the 1990s, due to factors like the end of the Cold War and transnational political pressures, European countries began to confront their roles in the Holocaust more directly, leading to what some scholars call a ‘Europeanization of the Holocaust’ (Aleksiun, Wóycicka, and Utz 2023). At the same time, this Europeanization of the Holocaust is deeply contested among those domestic and transnational political forces that promote an openly xenophobic and illiberal political agenda as well as many Central and Eastern European countries that included ‘their’ memory into the EU collective memory by equating Stalinism and Nazism (Himka and Michlic 2013; Subotic 2019). Contestations of solidarity with and public disputes in Europe characterize the self-image of the EU as a foreign policy actor. Among other things, the public discourse deals with the question of which policies should be prioritized in case of human rights violations or genocide, under what conditions and in what way this should happen. In this contribution, I am not so much concerned with emotions enabling or constraining a particular foreign policy response but rather how emotions as an outcome of institutional appraisal processes generally underpin or contest the EU’s identity as a foreign policy actor.

In line with the central theme of this Special Issue, I explore when and how emotions matter in EU foreign policy. Specifically, I argue that the self-image of the EU as a foreign policy actor is underpinned by emotion norms, i.e. a set of feeling rules and emotional meanings to structure emotional experience and collective identities. Emotions carry deep political implications (Gustafsson and Hall 2021). I suggest that European institutions use these emotion norms to provide moral orientation and generate social cohesion. The essay develops a conceptual framework for the EU as an emotional community. Emotional communities are ‘groups in which people adhere to the same norms of emotional expression and value – or devalue – the same or related emotions’ (Rosenwein 2006). Echoing the argument put forward by the editors of this Special Issue, the study demonstrates how emotion norms are central to understanding foreign policy debates that arise in response to norm violations, as they may enable or constrain the political decisions made.

The article is divided into three parts. In the first part, I introduce the concept of emotional community and show how it can be usefully applied to studying the European Union. In the second part, I offer a specific example of an EU emotion norm, namely the emotion norm of grief, and explain how it structures the EU as an emotional community. In the third part, I illustrate how EU policymakers mobilize to the emotion norm of grief in response to a norm violation. Finally, I summarize the main findings and a provide a critical reflection on the relevance of the emotion norm of grief in EU foreign policy.

Emotions in EU foreign policy

This article aligns closely with the analytical framework outlined in the introduction to the Special Issue, which connects international norm violations to EU action or inaction through the lens of emotional expressions. By focusing on the normative role of emotions, particularly the emotion norm of grief, in shaping the self-image of the EU and fostering social cohesion, the study illustrates how (appropriate) emotional expressions are integral to the EU’s institutional appraisal process. It suggests that emotions serve as a crucial component in the EU’s foreign policy identity.

The study highlights the domestic underpinnings of EU foreign policy. That is, it is not so much concerned with emotions enabling or constraining a particular foreign policy response but rather how emotions as an outcome of institutional appraisal processes more generally underpin or contest the EU’s identity as a foreign policy actor. As the editors of the Special Issue flag in their introduction, the presence, expression, or absence of emotions serve as indicators that provide valuable insights into the essence of the EU, including its fundamental nature, identity, and the principles it represents on the global stage. My contribution adopts the first part of the analytical framework, showcasing how a norm violation – in this case a violation of the emotion norm of grief – evokes a synchronized emotional expression at the EU-level – in this case the EU parliament. Emotions emerge as feeling rules during the appraisal process. Through the lens of the framework, the study aligns with and addresses the four key components of institutional appraisal processes in the EU as outlined by the editors of this Special Issue. First, the EU’s collective past, including the memory and trauma of the Holocaust, shapes its institutional memories and distinctive historical experiences. Second, events such as the commemoration of Holocaust victims are appraised as relevant to EU identity, reflecting shared interests and concerns. Third, within the EU, there exist shared feeling rules, depicting it as an emotional community where specific emotional displays are anticipated. Finally, the institutional appraisal process can involve multiple stakeholders and competences and may occur at different levels of the EU, whereby different actors may express different emotions at different levels, with particular attention paid to the feeling rules within the EU Parliament.

To sum up, the argument in this study speaks to the key components of the first part of the analytical framework by focusing on collective history/memory, interests/concerns, social/cultural context and EU competence underlying EU institutional appraisal processes. This also offers significant implications for the second part of the analytical framework as it provides the foundation – how the EU views itself as foreign policy actor – for enabling or constraining EU foreign policy decision-making in specific policy areas, for example when it comes to promoting human rights or preventing genocide in world politics.

Conceptualizing the EU as an emotional community

Emotions underpin how political communities are formed and function. It is within such social structures that emotions take shape and provide meaning (Hutchison 2016; Koschut 2014). Yet, the role of communitarian emotions have thus far received only scant attention in the study of the European institutions (Capelos and Katsanidou 2018; Curtis and Nielsen 2018; Manners 2018; Nicolai, Gellwitzki, and Houde 2022; Sanchez Salgado 2022; Terzi, Palm, and Gürkan 2021). I suggest that the concept of emotional communities provides a useful tool to analyze European politics. The concept of emotional community was originally developed by historian Barbara Rosenwein. Rosenwein looks at how emotional communities formed and vanished during the Early Middle Ages and shows how these communities emotionally linked together a particular group of actors through the expression of a particular set of collectively shared emotional expressions. While her empirical focus lies on emotional communities in historical perspective (medieval guilds, monasteries, courts, etc.) she explicitly formulates her concept as to include nation-states and the contemporary world, thus making it particularly relevant for the study of European integration (Rosenwein 2010, 12; see also Plamper 2010, 253).

According to Rosenwein, emotional communities rest on ‘systems of feeling’ that govern ‘what these communities (and the individuals within them) define and assess as valuable or harmful to them; the evaluations that they make about other’s emotions; the nature of the affective bonds between people that they recognize; and the modes of emotional expressions that they expect, encourage, tolerate, and deplore’ (Rosenwein 2002, 842). Emotional communities resemble groups in which people have a common stake, interests, values, and goals. Multiple and overlapping emotional communities may exist simultaneously and people can be members of different emotional communities. Emotional communities may also change over time.

Emotional communities are not constituted by a single emotion but rather a combination of interrelated emotional meanings that establish the standard for emotional interaction or, in short, emotion norms. The composition of such emotion norms depends not only on the emotions they value, and how and in what contexts they are expressed, but also on the emotions that are devalued or not recognized at all. The emotion norms of a particular emotional community are woven into the social and discursive fabric of emotional expressions, some of which are emphasized, deemphasized, or simply ignored. It is important to underline here that the lack of overt emotions may also constitute an emotional community. If an emotional community devalues emotions as such and their expression in general, perhaps finding them repugnant or simply irrelevant, that finding is as much an emotional community (a community that deliberately seeks to place social restraint on emotions) as are those communities that visibly proclaim and articulate their emotions.

Finally, and most importantly, emotional communities are tied to questions of power and hierarchies. Emotion norms exercise an ordering function of controlling and disciplining the emotional lives of individual members. Members of an emotional community may (and often do) disagree on a variety of issues. Conversely, resistance to comply with established emotional norms challenges the very foundations of such communities and paves the way for undermining or transforming them. What remains important is that, in resolving their conflicts, members follow the use and expression of properly agreed emotion norms – the expression of appropriate emotions in a given situation.

To sum up, the concept of emotional community refers to a sense of shared emotions, values, and identity among a group of individuals or within a specific community. Applying this concept to the European Union involves examining how emotional bonds can be fostered among EU elites, despite their diverse backgrounds and nationalities.

This brings up the question of ‘who feels’ as a member of the European emotional community and how emotional bonds can be generated among a diverse group of emotional actors. States cannot experience emotions themselves, as emotions are inherently individual experiences. However, states are composed of individuals, and it is through the emotions of these individuals that the collective emotions of the state are shaped. Intergroup Emotions Theory (IET) demonstrates how individuals experience emotions on behalf of their social groups, linking these emotions to action tendencies and social cohesion (Mackie, Smith, and Ray 2008). In the context of the EU, IET suggests that emotions can be triggered as individuals identify with a social group and emotionally react to events and objects affecting that group. The behavioral implications of intergroup emotions are complex and contingent on specific circumstances, necessitating the internalization of emotion norms to guide appropriate emotional responses for sustainable peace. These norms, reflecting and sustaining social structures, shape the collective emotional orientation within the EU emotional community.

The analysis focuses on elite discourse among political leaders, defined as ‘responsible decision-maker’ with political mandates, including heads of state, government, cabinet members, and elected representatives. While these leaders are expected to internalize emotion norms within the European emotional community, their public emotional expressions may not always reflect their true feelings. Although the article acknowledges the challenge of accessing the inner thoughts and emotions of political leaders, it asserts the relevance of empirical analysis in demonstrating the binding role of emotion norms among EU members. Rather than examining emotional patterns within individual leaders, the article aims to trace emotional patterns between leaders and the societies they represent.

In the following section, I will introduce a specific emotion norm of the European emotional community: the emotion norm of grief. Grief was selected as the dominant emotion in EU foreign policy due to several reasons. Firstly, the EU emerged from the devastation of World War II, which left a profound and lasting impact on the continent, resulting in widespread grief and mourning for the lives lost and the destruction caused. This shared experience of tragedy created a collective memory of suffering that continues to shape the emotional landscape of the EU. Additionally, the EU’s founding principles of peace, unity, and reconciliation are deeply rooted in the acknowledgment of past trauma and the commitment to prevent future conflicts, thereby perpetuating grief as a symbol of remembrance and solidarity. Finally, the memory of the Holocaust reinforces the ambiguity of grief as a unifying emotion within the EU, prompting collective expressions of solidarity among member states but also deep divisions. However, I am not suggesting that grief is the only emotion norm of the EU emotional community, only that it is the most relevant one when it comes to the contested memory of the Holocaust.

The emotion norm of grief

Grief is a powerful emotion. Such is its power that psychologists tend to view it as a basic and natural emotion of loss, located exclusively at the individual level. Popular notions of grief usually describe it as a very personal, private, and intimate response to an involuntary and irretrievable loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something that has died and to which an affective bond has been formed. By contrast, this essay understands grief as inherently socially shaped and controlled, transcending the boundaries between the private and the public as it is often collectively interpreted and enacted upon at the level of the state. Psychological and therapeutical approaches tend to view grief as a personal ‘illness’ to be ‘healed’ by going through a ‘normal’ progression of stages. From this perspective, grief gets ‘treated’ as a universalized object of clinical work, mainly rendered to the private realm of the individual (Rando 1984; Sanders 1999). Constructivist and sociological approaches, by contrast, criticize the psychological viewpoint for its narrow ontological focus on atomized individuals in sterile clinical settings because this separates the concept of grief from its undeniable sociocultural and historical context (Averill and Nunley 1993). This essay employs the constructivist position to study the EU emotional politics of collective grief.

In IR, Jenny Edkins (2002) and Kate Schick (2011) provide fascinating accounts of how ‘rushed’ mourning in the wake of traumatizing events, such as the state-led practices and images of September 11, tends to ‘gloss over’ vulnerability and painful memories. Karin Fierke (2004) and Evelin Lindner (2006) demonstrate how grief is embedded in political communities, contrasting it to the potentially isolating and violent effects of trauma. In a Special Issue on ‘Resilience and (In)security’, Brassett and Vaughan-Williams (2012) show how grief can be managed and performed politically, thereby constituting communities. In a similar vein, Emma Hutchison (2016) brilliantly outlines the healing effects of grief after trauma to repair and reinvigorate communal attachments. Building on these and other works, I argue that the public and collective emotional expression of grief constructs the EU as an emotional community. Precisely, I suggest that the ritually enacted emotion norm of grief creates deeper solidarities and loyalties among members of the European Union during crises.

Grief is not limited by the phenomenological and cognitive realms of individual bodies. Its nature is, above all, inherently social. It is through the social structuring of emotional responses to a valued loss in accordance with shared conventions that a group becomes conscious of itself and is bound together as a moral community. As one of the architects of the social construction of emotions, Emile Durkheim, points out: ‘mourning is not the spontaneous expression of individual emotions. (…) No doubt it may happen, in particular cases, that the sorrow expressed is sincerely felt. But more generally, there is no connection between the feelings experienced and the gestures performed by the actors of the rite. (…) Mourning is not a natural impulse of the private sensibility bruised by a cruel loss; it is a duty imposed by the group. They lament, not simply because they are sad, but because they are obliged to lament’ (Durkheim and Cosman [1912] 2001, 295–96). The collective expression of grief may indeed help to sustain group cohesion and solidarities, thereby bolstering the affective bonds among EU members.

Grief is a complex and ambivalent emotion. It consists of and is constructed from multiple other emotions that are either transitory or relatively enduring, such as sadness or sorrow over loss, fear or anger of being left alone, regret or guilt of not having spent more time with the deceased, envy or jealousy at other’s seemingly happy lives, relief or joy of being freed from a ‘burden’, sympathy or gratitude for the condolence and solidarity offered by others, and so on. Because definitions of grief, mourning, and bereavement are often used interchangeably, a brief clarification is in order. Grief generally describes the individual and collective emotional response to loss, including its mental, physical, and social manifestations. Bereavement denotes the collective acknowledgement of a loss coupled with the expectation that grief will follow. Mourning refers to how grief is practiced through institutionalized rituals. Based on these definitions, I argue that the experience and expression of grief can be conceptualized as a pivotal emotion norm of the European emotional community, based on to the type of loss, the nature of attachment and identity, and the culturally prescribed expression of grief or, in short, the grief culture.

Trauma and loss

Loss basically involves a disruption of continuity. As ‘the old’ is lost, grief becomes part of the transition to a changed self (Marris 1974). Some people may remain ‘stuck’ in the past resulting in prolonged grief or unresolved mourning whereas others may be forced to move into an unanticipated future and to reconstruct the self without the opportunity to grief (Volkan 1997). The type of loss may involve the loss of animate objects (such as human beings or animals) as well as the loss of inanimate objects (such as places and cultural artifacts). While the loss of human life obviously invokes categories of grief, the loss of places and artifacts contains an implicit, though no less powerful, notion of grief in world politics (Fierke 2004). Displacement, forced relocation, and other forms of involuntary spatial change evoke intense loss and life disruption for human beings. Displaced persons and refugees may have escaped physical harm but are forced to cope with the challenge of building new human-environment bonds to feel secure in their new ‘home’. Temporal change in the form of nostalgia or irredentism induce similar discontinuities, such as perceptions of an ‘empire lost’, denied nationhood, or historical humiliation (Callahan 2004; Fattah and Fierke 2009). Finally, loss varies in intensity, ranging from fundamental loss resulting from traumatic events that unsettle the foundations of social life to less severe and more ambiguous forms of bereavement, both of which ultimately depend on the nature of attachment and social characteristics of the person or group experiencing the loss.

In the case of the European Union, ‘loss’ speaks to the Shoah, the extermination of the Jewish people in Europe. As Jan-Werner Müller (2011) argues, “the Holocaust took place within a distinct normative vision of Europe as a privileged embodiment of certain values, namely the Nazis’ authoritarian and antisemitic ‘New European Order’”. Indeed, the EU itself proclaims that ‘European integration has, from the start, been a response to the suffering inflicted by two world wars and by the Nazi tyranny that led to the Holocaust’ (European Parliament 2019). Many Historians, however, have rejected this ‘European founding myth’ as inaccurate (Probst 2003). The Holocaust played virtually no role in the early stages of European integration. EU awareness of the Holocaust increased not until the 1960s and 1970s, mainly stemming from activist pressure groups, and a marked shift after the end of the Cold War when EU member states placed a common emphasis on self-critical memorialization to enhance the legitimacy of the EU and to confront their own complicity in the Holocaust in what some scholars have labeled a ‘Europeanization of the Holocaust’ (Wassermann 2019). Today, the EU frames its history and memory as an emotional history of memorializing grief and trauma. As former president of the European Parliament David Sassoli (quoted by Von der Leyen 2023) put it: ‘The European Union is not an accident of history. Our history is written in suffering, in the yearning for freedom of Sophie and Hans Scholl, in the desire for justice of the Warsaw ghetto’s heroes (…). We are not an accident of history, but children and grandchildren of people who found the antidote to the disease of nationalism.’ In sum, the Holocaust represents one of the darkest chapters in human history, with millions of innocent lives lost to systematic genocide. As I will show in the next section, within the EU, the collective memory and associated grief stemming from this immense loss is palpable, as member states collectively mourn the victims and confront the horrors of the past.

Memory and identity

Memory, and particularly memories of a traumatic past, has been known to play a key role in shaping collective identities and attachments (Hutchison 2016, 63). The nature of attachment refers to the existence and scope of meaning attached to animate or inanimate objects as sites of identification or identity anchors (Winter 1995). Emotional attachment combines the individual and collective entitlement to grief because it is deemed appropriate as to relationship, timing, and type of loss (Charmaz 1997).

The Holocaust has become an important mode of identity for the EU, symbolized in various places and dates of remembrance. Representing the numerous Nazi death camps in Europe, the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp stands at the heart of EU Europe for Citizens Program that, among other things, seeks to raise awareness of European remembrance and to promote projects dedicated to European remembrance through research, exhibitions, debates, and education. EU grants have helped to preserve the barracks and other infrastructure at Auschwitz-Birkenau as well as to buy equipment for digitizing documents and modernize archival infrastructure. The Council of Europe furthermore encourages teachers in its member states to develop awareness of the history of the Holocaust. To this end, it has also been organizing workshops for trainers and teachers to deepen their knowledge of Holocaust history and prevention of crimes against humanity. In 1995, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for the establishment of a European Holocaust Remembrance Day in all Member States. In 2005, in parallel with the UN General Assembly resolution, it adopted a resolution proposing January 27^th as European Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust in the EU. Memory, however, is always selective, contested, and takes shape within power relations. The EU is no exception to that. While Germany and France have chosen January 27^th, the day when Auschwitz was liberated, Holocaust Day varies in other countries according to the respective historical experience. A powerful example is the denial of the Holocaust by right-wing groups or the misappropriation of Holocaust remembrance practices in post-communist Europe to whitewash their complicity in the Shoa (Subotic and Zarakol 2020). In Germany, a leader of Germany’s right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has provoked outrage for infamously condemning the Holocaust memorial in Berlin as ‘a memorial of shame’. All of this suggests that historical memory, emotions, and European identity, while deeply contested, are interlinked: ‘Our Union was born as a response to the horror of the Holocaust and the war. Let us not forget who we are and what thirst for Europe there is in the world.’ In sum, memory plays a crucial role in in linking grief for the Holocaust with an EU identity. Many EU countries have implemented educational initiatives aimed at raising awareness about the Holocaust, teaching the lessons of tolerance and diversity, and combating antisemitism and hate speech. By educating citizens about the atrocities of the past, the EU seeks to prevent similar atrocities on the global stage from occurring in the future.

Feeling rules

Culture influences what can be considered and recognized as grievable through so-called ‘feeling rules’: socially appropriate ways to experience and interpret the meaning of loss. It prescribes the conventions, rituals and ways of expressing grief and how mourning is practiced (Hochschild 1979).

Importantly, Hochschild (1979, 1983) argued that groups develop two types of emotion norms (see also the introduction to this Special Issue). Feeling rules dictate how individuals should feel in a situation, while display rules specify how these emotions should be expressed. According to Hochschild (1983, 33), these different types of emotion norms are tied to different levels of internalizing emotion norms. When people follow display rules, they engage in mere surface acting. Surface acting involves the Goffmanian attempt of adapting one’s outside emotional appearance so that it runs consistent with normative expectations, such as crying at a funeral. When people follow feeling rules, they practice deep acting, whereby individuals attempt to arouse within themselves particular feelings that let them experience the emotions that a particular situation requires, for example not just to cry at a funeral but to actually feel sad.

A subset of these feeling rules directs grief. Grieving rules direct what losses we grieve, how we grieve them, who legitimately can grieve the loss, and how and to whom others should respond with empathy and compassion. These rules exist not only as informal conventions and religious traditions, but also in formal statements such as state policies that extend bereavement leave to certain individuals or regulations and laws that define who has control of the deceased’s body or funeral rituals. Feeling rules of grief may often overlap with other feeling rules. In this context, Jelena Subotic and Ayse Zarakol (2020) demonstrate how the European narrative of the Holocaust has developed as a feeling rule of guilt at the European level.

Importantly, grieving rules are tied to social hierarchies and inequalities. When EU members conform to the emotion norm of grief, they are simultaneously reproducing established social hierarchies and power asymmetries as part of that order. There are different normative expectations for low-ranking members than for higher ranked individuals. Those members that rank higher within the European emotional community are able to define emotion norms, which means that members in the lower ranks will be forced to manage their feelings to a much greater extent and will thus have to work harder to achieve emotional conformity. The self-image of the EU as an emotional community is thus formed based on the self-ascribed content of emotion norms. As a result, emotion norms often become subject to contestation and critique. Emotions like grief may become a matter of contention in dealing with conflicts and crises. As the ensuing parts will show, political struggles over who gets to define and impose emotion norms as well as political contestation over the proper understandings and interpretation that underpin emotional claims have profoundly shaped the EU in recent years. Those actors that rank higher within a group are able to define the proper ways of mourning, which means that actors in the lower ranks will be forced to alter their performance in order to better adapt to the prevailing grieving rules. This is meant to say that inside a grief culture, members are not treated as approximate equals but are woven together in asymmetrical power relationships. The self-image and ideal of ‘the state’ is formed based on the minority of its representatives. These social superiors perform a norm building function, which Hochschild terms ‘emotional authority’, by exercising power over potential or actual non-compliers through determining the grieving rules and by enforcing them via social control. The binding role of such emotional authority becomes particularly significant during times of loss. As Hochschild (1983, 75) explains, “(i)n times of uncertainty, the expert rises to prominence. Authorities on how a situation ought to be viewed are also authorities on how we should feel. In the case of the EU emotional community, Eastern European states, emerging from communism in the early 1990s, faced pressure to conform to Western European Holocaust narratives upon joining the EU, despite their differing emotional narratives rooted in experiences of Stalinism and Soviet occupation. This led to conflicts between Western and Eastern European feeling rules about the Holocaust, creating a collective memory conflict with the potential to undermine the creation of an emotional community centered on the emotion norm of grief. Western Europe, holding social power, enforced its Holocaust remembrance narrative on Eastern European states, often leading to resentment and resistance. Despite initially complying to EU demands for Holocaust remembrance, post-communist states later appropriated Holocaust imagery to represent communist crimes, asserting their own emotional narratives as can be witnessed in the empirical case study.

The need for guidance felt by those who must cross shifting social sands only adds importance to a more fundamental principle: in the matter of what to feel, the social bottom usually looks for guidance to the social top. Authority carries with it a certain mandate over feeling rules. (…) It is mainly the authorities who are the keepers of feeling rules”. This is not to say, of course, that state authorities are immune to cultural influences. State leaders are themselves also emotionally regulated, through wider social processes that culturally constitute and engender their feelings and their emotional-political expression. Still, the way emotions are managed and controlled within society is significantly shaped by and reflects existing asymmetrical power relationships and hierarchies. Put differently, grieving rules – and the emotional entrepreneurs and authorities that promote and interpret them – provide an affective meaning structure through which individuals and communities view and morally judge their attachment and response to loss. In the European Union, official grieving rules have been institutionalized in the official commemoration of the Holocaust. As the Finish Minister for European Affairs Tytti Tuppurainen (2022) underlines: ‘On Holocaust Remembrance Day, (…) we remember the lives lost to the destructive forces of intolerance, hatred and violence. In taking this moment to reflect on our collective grief, we look back on the past. This day reminds us of a painful part of our history and calls on us to bear responsibility for eradicating hate speech, racism and especially antisemitism – Europe’s original sin’.

To sum up, the trauma of the Holocaust is deeply ingrained in the historical memory of Europe, shaping collective concerns and identity. Throughout the EU, Holocaust remembrance and commemoration are integral components of European identity. The emotion norm of grief as a ‘responsibility to remember’ (Times of Israel 2017) underpins this post-war European identity as an emotional community. From memorial sites and museums to annual events such as Holocaust Memorial Day, EU member states actively commemorate the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, ensuring that their stories are not forgotten and that future generations learn from this tragic history. Through collective mourning and grief, the EU endeavors to confront the legacy of the Holocaust and ensure that its memory continues to inform efforts toward peace, reconciliation, and prevention of future atrocities.Having laid out the conceptual foundations of the emotion norm of grief, I now turn to a case vignette to illustrate how the emotion norm of grief constructs the EU as emotional community. The following example is meant to illustrate the theoretical assumptions laid out above. It is not meant to be a fully fleshed-out case study that is able to validate hypotheses. Given limited space available, I have to leave this task to others. Instead, the example is chosen to offer an empirical window into the emotional undergirding of EU institutions to provide moral orientation and generate social cohesion. Its purpose is to give the reader a more detailed account of how the concept of emotional community can be fruitfully applied to the case of the European Union.

Never forget. Never again: the EU’s emotion norm of grief and the contested memory of the Holocaust

The following case vignette discusses the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in a political climate where the moral commitment against antisemitism, racism, and nationalism had been undermined. Governments attempted to manipulate the memory of the Holocaust to downplay responsibility and emphasize national greatness. The politicization of Holocaust memory and denial of the Holocaust were evident in various countries, leading to debates, censorship accusations, and historical revisionism. Some Eastern European countries displayed differing attitudes towards Holocaust commemoration and education compared to Western EU member states. While some Eastern European countries made efforts to confront their past and memorialize Holocaust victims, others faced criticism for downplaying or distorting historical facts. For example, Poland’s controversial 2018 ‘Holocaust Law’ criminalized attributing Nazi crimes to the Polish nation, led to EU concerns about stifling academic freedom and historical research. In Lithuania, there have been disputes over the portrayal of historical figures involved in the Holocaust, with some commemorating individuals with controversial pasts. Hungary’s government has faced criticism for erecting statues of individuals associated with Hungary’s collaboration with Nazi Germany, raising concerns about glorifying figures linked to antisemitism.

However, even within Western Europe, attitudes towards the Holocaust varied, with some countries facing challenges in addressing issues such as rising antisemitism and far-right extremism. Right-wing groups and populist movements challenged and denied the Holocaust, minimizing its significance and questioning remembrance cultures. For example, Björn Höcke, a prominent figure in the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, referred to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin as a ‘monument of shame’. Other instances of Holocaust denial and revisionism occurred in France, Italy, and Austria, drawing criticism and condemnation. This violation of the emotion norm of grief and the contestation of the European memory of the Holocaust undermined the European emotional community and the integration process. The rise of illiberalism and nationalism in Europe posed a significant challenge to the commitment against racism and antisemitism.

In the midst of the embattled European memory of the Holocaust, the significance of reinstating the emotion norm of grief to counter the rise of illiberalism and nationalism became evident in the official commemoration of the end of the genocide. As the president of the European Parliament stated: ‘Since otherwise it would be pointless to remember the liberation of Auschwitz, let us join together here today in saying once again: Nazism and racism are not matters of opinion, they are crimes. (…) we must regard those acts and insults as being directed against each and every one of us. They are attacks on Europe and the values it stands for’ (Sassoli 2020). Put differently, since it arguably represented an elementary part of European identity, European leaders claimed that the suffering and grief of European Jews must be Europeanized in the emotion norm of grief. Any gross violation of the emotion norm of grief, for example by denying the Holocaust or refusing to honor its memory, threatened to undermine the European emotional community.

To counter this norm violation, the European Union commemorated the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz with a series of official events and initiatives in January 2020. The main ceremony took place in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, where EU leaders and representatives of member states paid tribute to the victims of the Holocaust. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, delivered a speech highlighting the importance of remembrance and the fight against racism and anti-Semitism. In addition to the ceremony, the EU also launched several initiatives to mark the occasion, such as the publication of a special Eurobarometer survey on anti-Semitism, the unveiling of a commemorative coin, and the launch of the ‘Lest we forget’ campaign to promote Holocaust education and remembrance. The European Parliament also adopted a resolution reaffirming the commitment to combatting anti-Semitism, racism, and all forms of intolerance and discrimination. As I will show below, the emotion norm of grief significantly shaped the EU’s response in this case.

Merely one month before the official commemoration ceremony in Brussels took place, German Chancellor Angela Merkel travelled to Auschwitz to express ‘a deep shame at the barbaric crimes’ and to reiterate the significance of and moral duty to collective grief: ‘One ought actually to fall silent in horror (…). Because what words could adequately express grief? The grief over all those many people who were humiliated, tortured and murdered here? And yet, as hard as it is in this place, more representative than any of the worst crime against humanity. Silence must not be our only response. This site obliges us to keep the memory alive. We must remember the crimes that were committed here and name them clearly’ (Merkel 2019). Given Germany’s historic responsibility for the Holocaust and its elevated role as the EU’s most powerful member state, Merkel’s speech in Auschwitz set the tone for the EU’s official commemoration.

On 27 January 2020, the European Parliament held a solemn ceremony to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 75 years after the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp had been liberated in 1945. The ceremony, including speeches by the president of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, and Auschwitz survivor Liliana Segre, took place at the opening of the plenary session. The ceremony in the European Parliament to commemorate the 75^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz began with a speech by the parliament’s president David Sassoli. In his speech, Sassoli (2020) declared that the Shoah would ‘forever be part of our collective European memory’. These crimes against humanity had been committed ‘on European soil’ and embodied ‘the negation of our civilization’. Most importantly, Sassoli cautioned against falling silent to the unspeakable horrors at Auschwitz. Instead, he urged his colleagues to never choose indifference because Europeans had a moral obligation to ‘bearing witness for the dead and fulfilling the duty, implicit in the sacrifice, of ensuring that their memory lives on’. In order to do justice to this duty, he deemed it imperative that the elected representatives of Europe – as ‘the voice of European democracy’ – mourn together and commemorate the victims of the Holocaust appropriately: ‘Today, full of emotion and united in contemplation, we bow to all the victims of the Shoah and fulfill our duty to remember. We fulfil that duty because we know that Auschwitz was built by Europeans and we today, as their descendants, must shoulder the burden of remembrance, because what happened then is still part of our reality today, and calls on us to accept responsibility’ (Sassoli 2020).

In an emotional speech that moved many members of the European Parliament to tears, Italian Auschwitz survivor Liliana Segre received a standing ovation when she said: ‘I am extremely emotional to be here in the European Parliament. Upon my arrival, I saw all the flags displayed at the entrance. So many colors, so many countries that are here in the spirit of brotherhood, with people speaking to each other and looking at each other directly in the eyes. This was not always the way things were’ (Jerusalem Post 2020).

Segre’s remarks initiated an emotional theme that would run throughout the ceremonial event. In her speech, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, directly addressed European legislators with words of grief: ‘We commemorate those who were tortured and disenfranchised by the National Socialist tyranny (…) We bow to the dead’ (Von der Leyen 2020). Citing the president of the first directly elected European Parliament Simone Veill (an Auschwitz survivor), von der Leyen linked the European remembrance of the Holocaust to her own personal memory: ‘As a German, I feel a special guilt. But I also feel a special responsibility. Because as a German in Europe, I also know that it was our neighbors who shook hands with us and welcomed us back into the circle of democratic peoples. Europe arose with the firm will never again to give any quarter to absolute evil. Europe knows like no other continent that this mission means: Do not let it take root, never ever again’ (Von der Leyen 2020). Reminiscent of failure to prevent the killing of European Jews, von der Leyen lamented that, ‘we first saw empathy die and the invective break out, without anyone putting an end to it’ (Von der Leyen 2020).

Here, we can see a direct reference to grieving rules. As pointed out above, grieving rules direct what losses we grieve, how we grieve them, who legitimately can grieve the loss, and how and to whom others should respond with empathy and compassion. According to Von der Leyen, to empathize with the suffering of European Jews under the Shoah constituted a moral obligation, a civic duty, for European citizens. Conversely, a violation of these feeling rules fundamentally undermined the European project: ‘(T)he memory (of the Holocaust) sharpens our moral compass and warns us. (…) For when memory fades, where today there are attempts to deny the Holocaust, where people are vilified and treated with contempt, this is where Europe is called into question’ (Von der Leyen 2020).

Many European legislators joined in on this sentiment. Former European Parliament president Antonio Tajani echoed that ‘the Holocaust represented a message to future generations: “Never again”’ (The Parliament 2020). Another former president of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, stressed that ‘Auschwitz is part of Europe’s and the world’s conscience’ (The Parliament 2020). The Polish deputy portrayed the Shoah as an ugly reflection of a bygone Europe whose return must be prevented by all means: ‘Auschwitz remains a screaming symbol of man’s potential for inhumanity. It is a vivid reminder that the progress of civilization can also bring terror and utter decline of culture. The horrific crimes by the Nazis has demonstrated how thin culture can be, and how quickly anti-Semitism and hatred can take hold in an otherwise civilized European society’ (The Parliament 2020). The Swedish representative David Lega put it in similar terms: ‘The creation of the EU is the very evidence of Hitler’s failure. Its mere existence is, in fact, the guarantee that nothing similar will happen again in Europe’ (The Parliament).

In a joint statement, the president of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Council Charles Michel, and the president of the European Parliament David Sassoli (2020) framed the genocide of European Jews during World War II as an integral part of European identity: ‘The Holocaust was a European tragedy, it was a turning point in our history and its legacy is woven into the DNA of the European Union.’ Moreover, the European leaders emphasized that remembering the Holocaust entailed a moral obligation to grief as a direct expression of European solidarity: ‘Remembering the Shoah is not an end of in itself. It is one cornerstone of European values. A Europe that places humanity at its centre, protected by the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights (…). We have a duty to stand shoulder to shoulder with Jewish communities as they feel threatened again across Europe (…). All EU Member States stand united in the determination that any form of racism, antisemitism and hatred have no place in Europe and we will do whatever it takes to counter them’ (Von der Leyen, Michel, and Sassoli 2020).

This case vignette illustrates the significant role of emotions in the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The event evoked powerful emotions, such as sadness, grief, anger, and hope, among survivors, their families, world leaders, and the public. Survivors and their families saw it as an opportunity to honor the memory of Holocaust victims, share their experiences, and ensure that the Holocaust is never forgotten. European policymakers used the commemoration to express solidarity with victims and reaffirm their commitment to combating antisemitism and racism. Emotional speeches by EU leaders reflected a sense of responsibility and remorse. The public also participated, paying their respects and engaging in acts of remembrance worldwide.

The case supports the central argument of the Special Issue that emotions are crucial in understanding the EU’s institutional appraisal process. Institutions and member states effectively remembered past experiences, leading to shared emotions and a cohesive action plan. The display of shared emotions, legitimized and evoked by feeling rules, was evident during the official ceremony. This mutual understanding prompted the EU to take extraordinary measures, including enhancing capabilities to combat antisemitism, collective action against hate crimes, and promoting a united stance on the Holocaust in the world. It underlines the domestic underpinnings of EU foreign policy, showcasing how emotions as an outcome of institutional appraisal processes underpin the EU’s identity as a foreign policy actor.

Conclusion

This article discussed the significance of the emotion norm of grief in understanding the European Union as an emotional community and how this underpins its institutional appraisal as a foreign policy actor. Precisely, the study explores how a violation of the emotion norm of grief influences EU-level emotional expression, particularly within the EU Parliament, aligning with key components of institutional appraisal processes. It highlights the role of collective past, events like Holocaust commemoration, shared feeling rules, and multi-level stakeholder involvement in shaping EU identity and decision-making. This emotional foundation arguably informs EU foreign policy actions, impacting areas like human rights promotion and genocide prevention. Relating directly to the analytical framework of this special issue, the case study underscores the intricate relationship between EU foreign policy and the construction of the EU’s identity as a foreign policy actor, particularly regarding the emotion norm of grief. The commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz highlights the EU’s stance against antisemitism, racism, and nationalism, aligning with its foreign policy objectives of promoting human rights, democracy, and tolerance. The varying attitudes towards Holocaust commemoration within EU member states, especially in Eastern Europe, pose challenges to the EU’s emotional coherence and unity in addressing historical injustices. Instances of Holocaust denial and revisionism within both Eastern and Western Europe reflect broader concerns about the erosion of shared values and the rise of illiberalism and nationalism, which violates the EU’s emotion norm of grief. The EU’s institutional appraisal, as articulated in the European Parliament, emphasizes the importance of the emotion norm of grief in preserving European unity and identity, thus illustrating how the EU constructs its view as a foreign policy actor by reaffirming its core values and principles in the face of historical distortion and denial.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [KO 4078/6-1].