What response?

The 1st November 2006 will never be considered an historic date for Europe. Yet it could be considered a symbol of lost opportunities. For it was on that day that a European Constitution was supposed to take the place of the somewhat unsatisfactory Treaty of Nice. With the entry into force of the Constitution, the European Parliament would have been engaged at the present time in the discussion of the budget for 2007, in the examination of common laws and in the preparation of various reforms on the working of the institutions to promote a real European democracy. Unfortunately this Europe remains but a dream and a utopia, because two countries out of twenty-five, mobilized by a nationalist campaign based on fear and hatred, rejected this prospect. The construction of a political Europe was prevented. So Europe remains a free-trade area, where competition is neither limited not organized by law, where each government conducts its own policy without any consideration for the general interest, and can oppose it own veto to the common rules. Europe risks in this way being a zone of technocratic bureaucracy that is heavy-handed, inefficient, often absurd and intolerable, and that imposes its decisions without any democratic control. At the international level, the consequences of the absence of political Europe are no less grave. Europe has no influence in a world that is becoming ever more dangerous at all levels, and that has a need for a balanced voice, a voice attentive to the human person and to international justice, to the great political balances, both economic and ecological, and a need for the long human and spiritual experience of Europe. In a few months’ time the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome will be celebrated. We need more than ever to emphasise the role of Europe as a model to build, after centuries of conflict, a space of solidarity and peace. We need more than ever to mobilise the Christians who have in the past played so important a role. But in the context of the disappearance of the democratic parties of Christian inspiration, or of the dilution of their programme in a liberal project, the time has come for the strong commitment of the Churches, because what’s at stake are peace, human rights, and democracy. The heritage of Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide De Gasperi cannot be squandered. It will undoubtedly be valuable to organize commemorations and conferences on the Treaty signed in Rome in 1957. But will they serve any use? That Treaty was a response to the failure of the project for a European Defence Community, the first attempt to conduct a political Europe, and unite its economies. What response will we give to the new failure of 2005? For the time being the response is a surfeit of national selfishness. That’s why the responsibility of Christians is enormous. As in 1950, it is the responsibility of not being afraid of the future.