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Th is article investigates the genealogy of the concept of heritage in the European Commission’s (EC) policy discourse from 1973 to 2016. Based on conceptual analysis of 2,412 documents gathered from the EUR-Lex database, the uses of the concept in the EC’s policy discourse were categorized into seven thematic areas: nature, environment, and biodiversity; human habitats; economy and employment; agricultural products and foodstuffs; promotion of societal development and stability; audiovisuality and digitalization; and European identity and integration. In the EC’s discourse, heritage develops in the context of intertwined phases of EU integration and cultural Europeanization. The study indicates how the EC governs heritage mostly through implicit cultural policies included in diverse policy sectors other than culture.

Heritage and memory, as closely related concepts, have great relevance to our world and European society today. Contemporary Europe faces political, economic, social, and humanitarian challenges that influence both how people deal with their past and how they build their identities

for their help in implementing the field research in Pécs and for providing 'insider' views of the year when Pécs was European Capital of Culture. She also thanks the coordinators of the European Capital of Culture Volunteer Programmes and all the volunteers who assisted in collecting and translating the data in Pécs, Tallinn, and Turku. Katja Mäkinen warmly thanks the organizers of the European Citizen Campus project for their good cooperation and support for the research and for providing the access to relevant sources of information. She particularly thanks Janine Fleck for granting permission to use her research interviews with the participants in the European Citizen Campus project in Freiburg, Germany. We all want to thank the many research assistants and project researchers who helped us to collect, translate, and transcribe our field research data in the EUROHERIT project. We thank following people for their hard work:

Heritage Label sites as subject positions offered for identification in this heritage discourse. Analysis shows that the subject positions are constituted by emphasis on the national level, preservation of the past for future generations and the key role of experts in the process of heritage. Although the heritage agents talk about Europe (representation) they do not identify with that as 'us'. By making the lack of 'banal Europeanness' in the videos visible the article shows the ambiguities of European identity politics.