François FORET, The European Union in search of narratives. Disenchanted Europe?, London & New York: Routledge, 2025

Abstract

Widely criticized for its lack of democratic charisma and its inability to generate genuine support among citizens, the European Union (EU) is rarely viewed today as a living political body seeking to win “hearts and minds.” More than once, it appears as a self-centred, rigid, and soulless bureaucracy that governs through outputs – aiming to deliver prosperity, security, and peace more as preconditions for a functional common market than as outcomes of a successful community-building process. Breaking with functionalist and institutionalist approaches that conceptualize the EU as a regulatory governance apparatus or a market technocracy, François Foret’s book, The European Union in Search of Narratives: Disenchanted Europe? offers a critical corrective to these interpretations.