New Narratives for Europe: Constructing European Union’s Global Role through Human Security
New Narratives for Europe: Constructing European Union’s Global Role through Human Security

Summary/Abstract: In the context of a fatigue European Union, suffering from a “last man” type of syndrome, rethinking the narratives of European Union is a necessary step in (re)assuring its internal coherence and to affirm its international role. Globalization, the changing meaning of security and a high degree of international interdependence determine the rhetoric of human security and of responsibility to protect, which value the individual as the security reference system. The fundamental European bounding principles stand on solidarity and the mutual need for security, with focus on individuals, in the context of peace and democracy. In this context, for a palliative rethinking of European narratives and to define its international role, EU should reaffirm its core principles through a bottom-up approach, based on common values correlated around the paradigm of human security. In order to reestablish trust and credibility (simultaneously within and beyond Europe) European Union should assume its declared responsibility to protect by over-passing the double-standards and devised political interests approach to humanitarian crisis. Moreover, a process of narrative rethinking based on a constructivist social construction of bottom-up pressure, can fill the current gap between rhetoric and practice regarding EU’s external reactions and could transform EU in the leading exponent of the human security paradigm, affirming its global role. The proposed article focuses on the role of constructivist methods in determining the resurrection of EU using the human security strategy, through a bottom-up approach.

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