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The most unexplored dimension of the ECOC is the one that most clearly distinguishes it from other cultural festivals — that is, its being one of the so-called "emblematic actions' of the EU, a dimension that is both ill-defined and one of the major selection criteria: the "European dimension". In order to analytically grasp this symbolic dimension of the ECOC — its being (or not) both a catalyst and an expression of identities reframed in European terms, and what that means — we need a close-up approach, one that can appreciate the ECOCs' formal and informal narratives as well as its practices, the plurality of actors actively involved in their shaping as they are embodied in official programmes, in everyday discourse and in the actual set of events and initiatives that substantiate an ECOC. To this end a qualitative, ethnographic research strategy seemed the most suitable. The peculiarities of the programme provided a particularly good case study: as we have seen in passing, in the year 2000 nine cities shared the title and were explicitly called on to co-operate in order to create the "European cultural space in the year 2000". As a result, the European dimension is brought forward both in the reality and in the representation of the ECOCs' 2000 events, so that the year 2000 can be seen as a concentrated, synchronic representation of what the diachronic passing of the title from one city and country to the next achieved over the years in terms of outlining a "cultural map of Europe".

DOI: 10.1057/9780230250437_5

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