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?