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The construction of the European Union is not by any means a long smooth-flowing river. Ever since 9 May 1950, the date of the Declaration of Robert Schuman, who launched the process that led from the first Communities to the European Union, the history of this construction has been punctuated by failures, crises and negotiations without end. Despite that, Europe, torn between deadlock and new acceleration, has never stopped progressing towards its unity. The fall of the Iron Curtain would herald new prospects of integration at the level of the whole continent. Unfortunately today, fifteen years after the end of Communism, the very idea of Europe is in crisis. We have observed the difficult return to democracy of the countries long subjected to the control of the Soviet Union; we have noted the lack of enthusiasm, too often also the indifference, of the West to the liberation movements, the inability of the rich peoples of Europe to welcome the peoples that have suffered so much to regain their freedom. In a world context of generalized fear of terrorism, globalization and mass migration, the two halves of Europe have failed to reunite, or have done so only artificially at the institutional level. They have met together not to re-unite the two souls of Europe, but merely to construct a single market. In this inability resides the crisis of the European idea that erupted last spring with the negative results of the referenda in France and Holland. It is a deep identity crisis. Curiously, the strong feeling of belonging to Europe which each of us feels when we travel outside Europe does not operate within Europe itself. No sooner has the European returned home than he/she becomes Spanish, Italian or Polish. Worse still, people are increasingly identifying with the smallest regions of Europe. The evolution of Spain, the separatist tendencies in Belgium, the appeals to the ‘nation of Padania’ in Italy, testify to the re-emergence of forms of nationalism or micro-nationalism. The recent referenda, which have denied a Constitution to Europe, have confirmed the recrudescence of the old fears of the foreigner, of those who are different. At the basis of this crisis is the strange inability to define what is the European citizen and what are the fundamental values on which European civilization rests. Pope John Paul II had grasped that no future progress is possible without a clear concept of the person and without a strong awareness of our own roots. Yet the Union exists. So much has been achieved. But so much no longer works. It’s interesting to recur to the writings of those who constructed Europe in the Fifties and Sixties to note their joy, enthusiasm and faith in the future. They were Europeans because they experienced Europe as a space of liberty and solidarity in contrast to the closed Communist world. We need to change a certain way of thinking, too technocratic, too exclusively based on the viewpoint of economics, to revive the dream of a truly common future and the enthusiasm of the early days. Nor must we ever forget that nothing is definitive in history. “We didn’t create Europe, we had the war”, it was said in pro-European groups in the Fifties. The nationalist beast is always ready to rear its head again with its confederates, hatred, selfishness and aggressiveness. The old Europe knows what that means.
