Pages of democracy” “

In the long journey toward European unity, the need for a Constitution, i.e. a fundamental constitutional text that would design the political and institutional architecture of Europe, has not always been felt. This need, though cultivated by the “founding fathers”, was progressively consolidated with the growth and affirmation of European integration. On the other hand, it may be observed that ever since the dawn of the idea of a “united Europe”, there have been constant attempts to identify solid foundations in terms of the values and “soul” for the “common home”, with the aim of consolidating the links between the peoples and states and reinforcing the political form that was beginning to take shape (European Coal and Steel Community, 1951, European Economic Community, 1957; European Union, 1992). FROM Hugo TO Adenauer, passING THROUGH Churchill. In this historic context, enormous significance is assumed by the gamble of the referendum for the ratification of the Constitutional Treaty in France on 29 May. It will be followed, three days later, by a similar consultation of the electorate in Holland. The eyes of half Europe are now fixed on Paris; the result of the vote will undoubtedly influence the ratification process in other countries of the Union. To gauge the historic significance of the French referendum and the fundamental importance of the Constitution on the road to a more integrated Union, founded on the rule of law and the dignity of the person and open to the world, we need to turn our gaze back once again to the “noble fathers”: to a long succession of literati, politicians, and intellectuals of various nationalities and cultural backgrounds who, especially between the 19th and 20th century, indicated the way of “European consciousness” and its “civil mission” at the planetary level. Not without emphasis the French writer Victor Hugo declared in 1849: “The day will come when there will no longer be Frenchmen, Englishmen, Italians and Germans, but all the nations of the continent, without losing their qualities and their glorious individualities, will be fused together closely into a higher unity that will form the brotherhood of Europe”. What emerges from the writer’s words is the prime objective of European unity, namely, peace, and the method for a solid construction: unity in diversity. The same aspirations can be encountered in the thought and work of other great European-minded statesmen and writers. They include – to come to a more recent period in our history – the British premier Winston Churchill, the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the Italian federalist Altiero Spinelli, the Belgian statesman Paul-Henri Spaak and the Frenchman Jean Monnet, ispirer of the Schuman Declaration (9 May 1950) that led to the birth of the ECSC. Schuman: “GIVING A SOUL TO EUROPE”. In the vision of the French Catholic politician Robert Schuman, “political integration must be the necessary complement to economic integration… United Europe prefigures the universal solidarity of the future”. Schuman, considered by many the real promoter of the process towards unity, insisted: this sum of peoples “cannot and must not remain an economic and technical enterprise. A soul needs to be given to it. Europe shall only live and prosper in proportion in which it is aware of its history and its responsibilities, and returns to the Christian principles of solidarity and brotherhood”. The role of believing citizens is essential in this process: “Europe is the cradle and guardian of democracy”, but “democracy owes its existence to Christianity. It was born on the day in which man was called to realize the dignity of the human person in his daily life, in his individual freedom, in respect for the rights of each and in the practice of brotherly love for everyone” ( Pour l’Europe, 1963). CHRISTIANITY, common heritage. Another founder of the European Community of nations, the Italian Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi, he too a fervent Catholic, also pronounced on several occasions on the foundations of united Europe: “If with Toynbee I affirm that Christianity lies at the origin of this European civilization, I don’t intend by that to introduce any exclusive confessional criterion in the appreciation of our history. I merely wish to speak of our common European heritage, of that shared ethical vision that fosters the inviolability and responsibility of the human person with its ferment of evangelic brotherhood, its cult of law inherited from the ancients, its cult of beauty refined through the centuries, and its will for truth and justice sharpened by a experience stretching over more than a thousand years ” (speech to the European Parliamentary Conference, 1954). It is the same Europe that is called by JOHN PAUL II to foster its own “Christian roots” ( Ecclesia in Europa, 2003), by coming to terms – as explained by BenedICT XVI – with the “crisis of cultures”, by recovering “its spiritual foundations” and bringing the Gospel hope to it. In this perspective, the European Constitution, to be subjected to the imminent referendum in France, though showing some ethical and juridical limitations, assumes a major role for the future of the Community, such as to render it necessary, even if imperfect.