What’s at stake

What emerges from the IPF Report published in recent days (summary in this number and integral text on www.ipfe.org) is a Europe that is increasingly old, tired and turned in on itself, a Europe that is preparing to wage a kind of war against immigration, but that is in fact increasingly dependent on it, since immigrants represent the youngest and most dynamic part of its population. Trends in demographic growth are in substance being reduced to zero, even if some countries – such as France and some nations in Northern Europe – are experiencing signs of revival, while the “new” countries that have entered the EU present substantially negative data: a lack of dynamism combined with a lack of courage to hazard the future and little wish to grow. On the institutional front, the decline in marriages and growth of extra-marital births confirm the progressive disintegration of an uncertain and confused society that inevitably suffers from a considerable qualitative disparity when compared with younger and more dynamic nations with a strong impulse for growth, such as those of Mediterranean Africa or Asia. The European statistic of one abortion every 27 seconds – 1.2 million per year – is particularly shocking, but for any stabilization of these figures we will have to wait some time. The entry into the EU of some Eastern European countries has in fact significantly altered the situation we were previously used to dealing with: in some of these countries the number of abortions is equal to that of births. Despite bringing youthful and dynamic forces into the EU, the wind from Eastern Europe has also brought with it worrying germs of disintegration: divorces, abortions, low birth rate. This is a consequence of the many years of living under regimes that promoted a mentality of mistrust, isolation and secularisation. That mentality is responsible for the dissolution of the minimum moral fabric of society that has ended up by having negative repercussions also on the family itself. The IPF Report also makes some specific proposals that can in large part be shared, and that are inspired by the fundamental idea that the family is and must remain an irreplaceable resource for society. For in its absence all the most negative phenomena risk being aggravated. Caution however is needed when the hope is expressed of achieving a harmonization of family policies at the European level: the good intentions might conceal an attempted interference by Europe, lately concerned more by the aspects linked to questions of gender than by the family’s real needs. Precisely in the intention to re-define the family in legal terms we may detect an attempt to undermine it, by widening in a quite improper way the significance and the contents that characterize it. The attempt to harmonize national legislations [on the family] according to a frame of mind that makes everything revolve round the themes of discrimination and homophobia is moving in this direction. On the contrary, sexual diversity is for the family a cardinal principle that must be held onto in all its clarity. Invoking, in short, a kind of EU blanket could be revealed as a boomerang. For example, if the proposal of allocating a fixed quota of GDP to families seems positive, as far as income tax deductions are concerned it ought to be the national governments that identify the most appropriate solutions, as did France with its family quotient. It should in any case be pointed out that family policies are the responsibility of each individual State. Though not offering any surprises, the IPF Report does however ripple the water by offering an exhaustive portrait of the family in Europe today. It is to be hoped that its recommendations and reflections will be taken on board. The document proposes a specific “Green Paper”: we have to ask ourselves however whether documents of this kind have hitherto had any real impact on policies. The Report may represent a means of awareness-raising, an attempt to review the situation and provide guidelines for policies, though interesting and exhaustive publications already exist on the matter. What seem really indispensable are a political will and a human and ethical vision that are able to make people understand the value of what’s at stake.