The communication frontiers of EU’s eastward enlargement : the power of discourse as identity-building and boundary- making device

Abstract

The main objective of this essay lies in defining the motivations, strategies and discourses of EU institutional narratives and their monopoly of legitimacy in the communication of the objectives and implications of EU’s enlargement towards Central and Eastern Europe to the citizenship. In particular, when dealing with this key border modification issue, special attention will be paid to the observation of how relevant EU institutional discourse and utterances pose a notorious semantic charge whose power and influence are no less significant than harder identity-building and boundary-making devices.Going beyond territorial and geographical borders, we find a no less important theoretical delimitation of Central and Eastern Europe is or should be, namely, identity borders, which are deeply associated to a supposed mental and cultural gap between the two sides of the continent. This mental, economic, social and political boundary can be more or less a reality, according to different perceptions or motivations, but it is, above all, an interest-driven border which is subject to change depending on the also changing political context and objectives.