Four ecumenical organizations have published a “brief document for the Churches” in preparation for the forthcoming elections to the European Parliament (10-13 June 2004). The document recalls the questions that are at the centre of the commitment of the Churches and the agencies linked to the Churches in Europe: they include unemployment, social exclusion, human rights, immigration and asylum policies, the new technologies, aid to development and the opening of Europe to the rest of the world. The four organizations that signed the document are: CEC’s “Church and Society” Commission, the Association for Development of the World Council of Churches (Aprodev), the Commission of the Churches for Migrants in Europe (CCME) and the European Federation for Diakonia (Eurodiaconia). The Churches emphasise the need for the EU to be a “community of values” and affirm that Europe cannot be limited to merely an economic dimension. The Churches ask that the role of competition in the life of the European Union be offset by the practice of “real solidarity”. A part of the document is devoted to the entry into the EU of 10 new member states on 1st May; thanks to this enlargement Europe may develop as a “multicultural and multiethnic continent” and demonstrate “practical solidarity”.
