Anthropological Analysis of the Language and Contents of EU Documents

As mentioned in Chap. 9, the European Union, despite the limitations provided for in the Treaties, is clearly entering the area of primary morality policies. Consequently, in view of the close link between these policies and anthropology, and considering the “flexible” solutions provided in the Treaties and constituting the anthropological pillars of EU policy described in Chap. 10, a question arises about the anthropology adopted in the EU’s political practice. The nature of morality policy makes it impossible, as indicated above, to “abstain from voting.” Even if primary law does not clearly define the EU’s position, its institutions must, at least implicitly, adopt an operational definition. In other words, they need to take a stance in the dispute over man. It should be added that, given the flexibility of the EU’s axiological pillars and the institutional and decision-making specificities of the Union, characterized by disparities in the organizational, political and cultural identities of its major institutions, it may be assumed that the anthropological perspective adopted by each institution may differ as well. At the same time, the socialization processes within the Brussels elites and the consensual logic of the decision-making process, manifested not only in the fact that the EU Council rarely resorts to voting, but above all in the fact that decisions are taken in the course of interinstitutional agreements made outside of the official mechanisms provided for in the Treaty, seem to suggest that these differences will not be fundamental. They may, therefore, be visible more in the scale of engagement than in the general orientation of its policies. The analysis carried out in this chapter, following the theoretical assumptions made in Part I and the findings made in Chap. 9 on the role of language in morality policy, focuses on the language of EU institutions. For if “it is the institutions that are the carriers of culture, ideas, etc.,” the basic communication channel of these ideas is always the language. Given that in the literature of the subject it is recognized that “one source of EU integration has been the development of a common discursive political vocabulary that constitutes a source of political legitimation,” there can be no doubt about the importance of the use of terms for the orientation of European policy. The study has therefore been focused on the main institutional actors of the European Union: the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, and the Court of Justice of the European Union.