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The year that is coming to an end has been an important one for Europe and for the European Union. The enlargement to 25, the signing of the Constitutional Treaty, the decision to start negotiations on Turkey’s membership (not envisaged before 2014), and the fixing of a timetable for the accession of Balkan countries (Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia), form a challenging prospect. Just beyond the doors of the Union the political crisis in the Ukraine shows what is meant by the aspiration to Europe in countries that feel themselves a part of Europe, though outside its frontiers. The institutional situation at the present time poses two crucial, if often misleading and critical issues: European identity, and the frontiers of Europe and the European Union. The new Barroso Commission seems very far from any wish to impose a “European government”, while the Euro zone, i.e. the more restrictive and cohesive area of the single currency, is having to grapple with persistent economic stagnation and the vexed debate about how to overcome it. Moreover, the rapid acceleration of the geo-political processes has led to the powerful re-eruption (e.g. with the ritual murder of the Dutch film director Van Gogh) of an issue that the EU had thought it had expelled from its door, that of identity, immigration and religion. And perhaps the crux lies just here. Identity, to be sure, is a slippery and contradictory question. Nonetheless, in sum, it may be observed that the international political situation and the economic and demographic prospects are concurring to falsify the typically European equation (driven by the French) that modernity means the overcoming of religion (Christian and Catholic in particular) in response to the demands of progress. The sometimes grotesque application of the recent law on religious symbols in France and the grotesque aspects of the “politically correct”, demonstrate this in full, just as its opposite has been demonstrated by the reluctance to cite Christianity in the preamble to the Constitutional Treaty. Europe will have an extraordinarily rich and complex evolution in the years ahead. The Union will expand. Relations with America and Asia, with the Caucasian and Middle Eastern powder kegs, will be multiplied. And ever more complex forms of reinforced cooperation between member states will be developed within a perhaps too big Union. There will then be a need for a “surplus” of ideals and moral and cultural principles, and hence for a breath of civilization, that cannot but have a significant religious motor: “Christian roots” are an invaluable and indispensable factor of dynamism. They are so for the USA, which can be outdone in terms of social development, but which remains our necessary and decisive partner for the present and the future. Sir
