The aim of this article is to compare the respective domestic backgrounds for British and Danish policies towards Europe and to examine how these have shaped the European policies of the two countries in the 1990s. The article aims to cast light on the role of states' understanding of European integration through empirical application of a theoretical approach, discourse analysis. The main argument is that the patterns of understanding of `Europe' show important linguistic similarities in that the base of the dominant discourse is instrumental and the primary political conflict is between sub-discourses of this instrumental discourse. In the 1990s, the difference between the two countries is in relation to which salient social and political actors adhere to what sub-discourses on Europe. The article argues that the differences between the two countries' European policy lines are shaped by the different understandings of the state/nation. The different understandings of the state/nation have influenced the content and procedures of policy. British policy in general, and in the 1990s in particular, has been dominated by a neoliberal understanding of the state, and Danish policy by more welfare thinking.
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