The paper tackles the EU as a version of Europe’s geopolitical configuration and the concept of Europe as it has been implied or articulated at different stages of its development. The demarcation line is drawn between the “Old” EU in the shadow of the bipolar world structure and the “New” EU after its expansion eastwards. The theoretical framework of the research involves symbolic geography and ideology studies. The focal point would be the gap between Western and Central-European Europe in their imaginaries concerning themselves, ‘Europe’ as a symbolic entity, and strategic positioning of themselves within this entity. The range of questions to be posed in the context contains the following: What does the geocultural notion of ‘Europe’ imply? Is the EU as ‘Europe’ functioning as an inclusive project as it ultimately declares, or has exclusion always been its flip side? And how do different parts of ‘Europe’ correspond to each other within the EU project?
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