Three main themes ” “

New priorities in the social policies of the European Union and dialogue between faith and science with a view to a more authentic service to society: these are the themes to which is dedicated the January number of “Europe Infos”, monthly of the Commission of the Episcopates of the European Community (COMECE) and the Catholic Office of Information and Initiative for Europe (OCIPE). KEYWORD: ACTION. Aart Jan de Geus, Dutch Minister for Social Affairs, who chaired the meeting of the Council of Ministers for employment and social affairs of the European Union at the end of 2004, has formulated a 6-point plan called ACTION. The title is an acronym designating a specific sum of social policy and employment: activation denotes participation in the labour market, in particular that of disadvantaged older and younger workers; commitment means that of all the parties involved; training means improving the qualification of workers; inclusion means the social inclusion of the weakest; organization refers to the improved organization of work; and non-discrimination indicates a greater equality of opportunity. At the end of the debate, “the Council of Ministers concluded that now is the time for action” and that “economic development needs to be combined with a better social and employment policy, in the framework of the Lisbon Strategy, so that the two aspects may mutually reinforce each other”. A PACT FOR YOUTH. The ministers also “welcomed the initiative of a pact for youth launched by the German, French, Swedish and Spanish heads of state and of government, in a joint letter to the President of the European Council”. The basic ideas of the “Pact for European Youth” are: giving all European youth the means to fulfil themselves; responding more effectively to youth unemployment and the difficulties of social and professional insertion; seeking a better coordination of the EU’s youth programmes; promoting new initiatives to support European demographic growth and improving the opportunity to reconcile professional with personal and family life and with the wish to have children. “In fact – points out Europe Infos – the proposed European Pact for Youth responds to a central requirement of the European strategy for families presented by the General Secretariat of COMECE last February”. The declarations of intention of the responsible politicians “seem to reflect a growing concern for families. The overriding thought is still that of improving the rate of employment in Europe, but, at the same time, concerns about the demographic trend are perceptible”. SCIENCE AND SOCIETY. “Images of science” is the title of a conference held in Amsterdam last December, with the participation of European scientists, sociologists, philosophers and theologians. The conference was prepared by a committee chaired by Prof. Egbert Schroten, theologian and professor of ethics at the University of Utrecht, on the initiative of the Dutch Presidency of the Union. The first intervention concerned the role of the ethical, juridical and social role of the sciences. Dietmar Mieth, theologian and philosopher at the University of Tübingen in Germany, pointed out that religion stimulates ethics and that it is fundamental to find points of convergence in religious and secular ethics. As regards the attitude to adopting different ethical points of view, he expressed doubts about ‘pluralism’: if pluralism is not contained, it enters – he argued – into a continuous regression to the minimum common denominator and eventually arrives at a new form of fundamentalism. EU programmes ought, moreover, to take into consideration the contribution of theology to the debate on ethics. “BELIEVING ONESELF GOD”. Msgr. Józef Zycinski, archbishop and professor at the University of Lublin (Poland), expressed the point of view of the Church in a round table called “In Response to Science”. Zycinski, who is himself an astrophysicist, “pointed out the tension inherent in the Enlightenment and the great post-modern disillusion. People began to intuit that the sciences are not always exact and realize the limitations of certain laws of physics”. Zycinski also intervened in the work group “Believing oneself God”, to which were invited a representative of the Moslem world, Hasan Hanafi, a Protestant theologian, Egbert Scgroten, and Henk Jochesem, molecular biologist and professor of medical ethics at the Free University of Amsterdam. “A conference of this kind – concludes “Europe Infos – had the merit of permitting experts to engage in an interdisciplinary exchange, indispensable if we want to prevent science and society taking opposite paths. Society has the right to demand dialogue, so that science may assume its own responsibilities and place itself really at the service of society”.