EU heritage diplomacy: entangled external and internal cultural relations

ABSTRACT Cultural heritage is an expanding yet contested area of EU policymaking, which has recently been identified as an instrument for EU international cultural relations. In this article, drawing from critical heritage studies and recent scholarship on heritage diplomacy, we see external and internal cultural relations as blurred and deeply entangled in EU heritage policies. Empirically, we focus on the European Heritage Label (EHL), a central EU heritage policy instrument. We explore how heritage practitioners at selected EHL sites and EU heritage policymakers understand and give meanings to international cultural relations and explain the role of cultural heritage in diplomatic endeavours. Our method is a dynamic frame analysis of 44 interviews conducted in the European Commission and at eleven EHL sites in ten European countries. The analysis identified four frames of international cultural relations in the data: relations with non-EU countries for peace and stability building, showcasing and branding of cultural heritage for foreign audiences, creating unity in Europe, and small-scale international heritage projects. These frames manifest different understandings of heritage diplomacy ranging from geoculture to shared heritage and from intercultural encounters to the use of soft power.