Europe needs a shared vision of Justice and Equality

Europe is strong. But it must also become a living symbol of refinement, creativity and humanity: with a shared vision of justice and equality

Mehru Jaffer Vienna

For more than two generations, Europe has enjoyed enviable peace and prosperity. As memories of the last world war further fade and those born at the end of the Cold War come of age, the future of the continent is stamped with numerous question marks.

The European Union's (EU) population of 500 million makes it the third largest in the world, after China and India. Its 27 member-states account for a quarter of the world's economic output, represent the biggest single buyer of goods from the world's developing countries and by far the biggest donor of aid.

According to Vienna's Institute for Human Sciences, the enlarged EU faces its greatest challenge in history. It seems that older forces that animated European integration are no longer able to provide political cohesion. What can hold Europe together in the future? Does Europe's common culture offer a new source of energy? What moral concepts, traditions, goals are capable of bringing together the Union's inhabitants in a common democratic polity?

On its 25th anniversary, the Institute used the occasion to invite international scholars, intellectuals and politicians in a forum titled 'Conditions for International Solidarity' to discuss how a European solidarity can be established in a union full of diversities and inequalities. Bronislaw Geremek, member of the European Parliament since 2004, former foreign minister of Poland and advisor to Lech Walesa, feels that the challenges facing Europe at the beginning of the 21st century require a profound review of the EU. “We must abandon the language of accountants and go back to the language of day-to-day communication, where we ask ourselves what is good or bad, beautiful or ugly, right or wrong,” he said.

It is not only community institutions that need to be redefined, a feeling of belonging to the community has to be instilled. The feeling is that the EU bureaucracy in Brussels may not succeed in imposing rules and regulations if they are not in sync with the spirit of people at the grassroots. “Constitutions express a political community's history, culture, values and political convictions. The Constitution for Europe, now being written, is no different. It cannot create the common bonds that define Europe and hold it together. It can only reflect and be animated by them,” feels Kurt Biedenkopf, a German politician and professor of law.

Solidarity, the slogan of the 1989 revolution that brought about a sea change in Europe, remains a major inspiration for the institute. The institute is a dream come true for Krzystof Michalski, who was a 34-year old Polish scholar in Vienna in 1981. With Jozef Tischner, the Polish philosopher, priest and chaplain of Solidarity as president, Michalski started the institute 25 years ago, to foster an intellectual discourse between East and West Europe. Michalski says the solidarity movement of the 1980s offers an experience from which today's Europeans can still learn.

“Another lesson of 1989 is that it is hardly possible to address the issue of social identity without examining the dimension of the future including people's wishes, expectations and dreams of which they are often only dimly aware. Sometimes these wishes and dreams can be mobilised to achieve a large shared project such as that of a free society in 1989. Today that project might be Europe itself,” he says.

The new single currency and the inclusion of 10 new members are seen as powerful indicators of solidarity but the question is, what next?

The EU was born after two suicidal world wars that brought the continent to its knees. It was common economic interests at first that shaped the EU as an alliance against communism. Political ambitions were shelved in 1957 as French and West German coal and steel industries merged to avoid future wars. Liberal, democratic and social rights of citizens strengthened the economic solidarity between the six core member states that eventually propelled the continent towards peace and prosperity. Today, the EU's enlargement into Eastern Europe is seen as the biggest process of peaceful regime change in history.

Now that enlargement has brought poorer people into the EU, the economic and cultural diversity of the continent is stretched, creating fears and insecurities. The search is on for new ways to deal with the new reality.

The solidarity of the past is challenged in more ways than one. The new members demand to be treated equally despite being poor. It is often heard that membership to the EU is precious but in the same breath it is pointed out that East European states did not re-gain their sovereignty from Moscow only to surrender it to Brussels. What worries Danuta Huebner, European Commissioner for Regional Policy, is the rise of individualism, the strain of accelerating social change and the decline in economic performance in Europe. To cement solidarity on the continent, the search is on for a deeper and lasting shared purpose that is powerful enough to face the vices and acts of extreme intolerance and violence threatening the continent today.

Huebner challenges the view that solidarity is at risk with the inclusion of Central and Eastern European states to the EU. The Commissioner agrees that enlargement has fundamentally changed the EU and given rise to new policy concerns and some new problems but she insists that the sentiment of the people of East Europe remains European in a very deep sense of the word. “The ties that bind East and West Europe together were challenged by 40 years of Soviet domination but this did not fundamentally change the European character of the East European states,” Huebner says.

So what alternative bonds can be found to replace ties that have helped the EU to survive for two generations?

Jean Monnet, the 20th century pragmatic internationalist, is remembered today as one of the main architects of European unity. He said late in his life that were he to begin European integration again, he would start with culture. Biedenkopf suggests that if the EU is to be durable it must place greater emphasis on its cultural heritage. At present, secularisation, rationalisation and atomisation of civil and social life along with the steady expansion of government into every social sphere have led to the privatisation of culture and religion, reducing their potential to stimulate feelings of community, identity and solidarity.

Europe's multiplicity of languages prevents the evolution of a strong sense of identity. English is a lingua franca but serves more as a technical language of commerce and not of a community. Biedenkopf sees the continent's musical, literary, artistic and architectural traditions as the true common language of the new Europe. The need is to create an environment that allows cultural cohesion to grow from the bottom up, also to encourage open public dialogues where people can discover common cultural and moral assumptions among each other.

About the EU Constitution that will be enforced in 2009, if ratified by all members, Biedenkopf says to enable it to guide Europeans through periods of change and yet unknown threats the roots of the Constitution must reach to the foundations of history and identity. After all, Europe's citizens freely acknowledge that they share the same past.

Charles Taylor, eminent professor of philosophy and chairman of the Institute's Academic Advisory Board, is convinced that understanding “the other” is the greatest social challenge of the 21st century. Winner of the Templeton Prize in 2007 and author of Varieties of Religion, among other works, Taylor repeats that it is an outdated belief that the experience and culture of westerners must be an one-dimensional norm. To not to know the other, to block the understanding of others and to be utterly imprisoned in our own outlook does not become Europe.

Europe continues to be strong. But Europe must also become a living symbol of refinement, creativity and humanity: with a shared vision of justice and equality. That is how the other can become meaningful, and Europe confined its own self identity.