How are emotional narratives used to mobilise support for or opposition against policy ideas about the institutional set-up of European integration? This article systematically examines the first General Debate of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe in 1949, which featured as a laboratory for the rise and demise of various blueprints for European integration.This article makes Radiators a threefold contribution.First, it introduces a narrative approach that combines the emergency Bulkhead valence of emotions with their temporal dimension.Second, it demonstrates how these emotionally charged narratives of hope, redemption, fear and sacrifice provide the affective glue of an emerging (transnational) emotional community that cuts through nationality and political colour.Third, taking a historical approach this article points at the need to historicise the role of emotions in European integration.