Well, I still see a need for Europe. (If you don't believe me, just try to eliminate from your life everything Europe offered to you in the last 50 years : peace, prosperity and - less (because nobody thought at that), a spiritual community. Thank you, America, for your Marshall Plan !)
Europe has no birthday. Does it have to ? Why, France does ? England does ? If you'll tell me US have July 4th, I'll tell you that that's wrong : America - as Utopia - was an idea who's appearance preceded by centuries the creation of the political state. Europe was born the moment one thought about unifying the Christian lands of the continent "Europa"
Europe has no clear frontiers. C'mon ! Is THAT so important ? Don't tell me : you cannot sleep at night thinking about where Europe ends, LOL ! Well, to me, it's obvious that Europe's limits varied always, especially in the east, where the frontier changed every time Europe and respectively Asia were successively powerful. I don't know why is it hard to conceive the identity as "changing". (It will be only now that these European frontiers will finally freeze, as they follow well-defined state-borders. But one forgets the cultural frontiers
) After all,
unifying Europe is not unifying states, it's unifying peoples. There's the key : Europe is a space for peoples and persons, not for governmental manoeuvres. If you feel it's rather the last one, take action. (No one offers a chance to a European identity, but wonders why Europe is weak and "no one loves it". Did you try ? I remember having a dispute with a Danish pal last year : "why would I assume another cultural identity than mine ?" "did you try ?", I asked him. "No". Aha! well...) I say it again : unifying Europe is not unifying states, it's unifying peoples. It's not erasing cultures, it's not destroying national identities ; it's giving them flexibility and another frame. This frame and this flexibility proved its value in the last 50 years.
That we're too diverse to unite ? ~ chuckling ~ It's an imaginary obstacle, it's the last refuge for the nationalists (I thought this race is perishing !). This "diversity as obstacle" is just a joke for a historian or a cultural critic.
The differences between the Gascons, the Burgunds and the Normands, between Oldenburg Frisons and the Bavarians, between the Piemontans and the Calabrians did not obstruct France, Germany and respectively Italy to unify.
Even more, for all this diversity, you'll continuously see a German reading Dante, a French reading Kazantzakis : for the simple fact
we have the same passions, ideas, torments. For all this diversity, once more, you'll continuously see a Portuguese listening to Mozart, a Polish listening to Beethoven. (We understand the same music and we have the same musical principles - in fact, I think that's our true and deep common European language, abstract and concealed.) When I have such consistent proofs of life, the nationalist points of view gradually reached a level where I see them both nonsensical (half-irrational) and fraudulent.
You'll feel how Europeans you are when leaving Europe. Visit Asia, Africa, even America. Seen from inside or from too close, Europe gives the impression she doesn't exist - it's like the story of the biologist who wanted to study an elephant by microscope. All he saw were grey colours and some crevasses, so he concluded elephants do not exist.
A European identity
is not the identity offered by the European Union. The missing point is "un-birth" (allow me to put it in this way) of a European mystique, of a credo in this Continent. Because what makes the metaphysical unity of this Continent is its culture and its art, which are the ultimate expression of the Europeans. If your roots will be in Culture, Europe is so easy to understand ! European culture is a fatherland in itself (at least for me). Europe ? E = mc² !
Europe = a continental
mass multiplied by intensive
culture (culture²) ! That's a hell of an equation
and tells so much to me !
More I hear opinions of a certain temperate scepticism, more I realise where the true problem of the European Union lies. As ever result of the compromise between national interests, the EU's institutions, as I see them, excluded one of the most important principles : the subsidiarity. Instead of being involved in the grand lines of the Continental unity (foreign affairs, currency, defence, etc.), EU's recommendations and directives touch the everyday life, where the national state should do its business : the ISOs and the agricultural quotas, the diameter of an apple (!), the "regularly" accepted curving of a banana (!, Christ !), the decibels' levels allowed for a
tondeuse (damn ; how do you call in English those machines you cut the lawn's grass with ?
). Who's fault ? National states', who never considered abandoning their prerogatives. That's why EU became annoying for the EU population. "Brussels tells me what to do, what to eat, etc." Hm, that's because the "beloved" states didn't allow it to do its
real transnational business.
As ever « in the name of Europe »,
Raal
