Reviving the ideal

The centre-right forces can claim a victory in the seventh European elections, which registered a sharp defeat for the Socialists, an advance of the ecological parties and the far right, and a further fragmentation of the political groups. The official inauguration of the new legislative is scheduled for 14 July. The newly elected MEPs have also received the good wishes and recommendations of the European episcopates that have not failed to point out the low level of voter participation.Towards a more just society. The Presidency of the Council of Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE), meeting in Zagreb, issued a statement on 8 June to express its good wishes to the MEPs elected to lead the European Parliament. “To the new MEPs – says the statement – is entrusted the task of making the Union a more just society founded on respect for human rights, the dignity of the person, mutual cooperation, solidarity and subsidiarity, justice and the defence of life”. “If the Union – continues the statement – proves equal to providing proper political responses to the concerns and hopes of European citizens, it will then be able to respond to its original vocation. Meeting here in Zagreb, we hope that Croatia too may shortly become a member of the EU”. The “big plans”. “Today some of our citizens fail to see what’s at stake in the building of Europe”; more especially “they are no longer able to see the big plans”, said Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, Archbishop of Bordeaux and Vice-President of the CCEE, whom SIR managed to reach by telephone in Zagreb, and who gave his immediate reactions to the results of the elections for the renewal of the European Parliament. Commenting on the low voter turnout and the wide gap between citizens and EU institutions, Cardinal Ricard observed that “one of the key issues is the mobilization of European opinion that can no longer see what’s at stake in Europe; they see how it works and the problems related to the decisions taken in Brussels, but can no longer see the big plans”. “I think – said Ricard – that we must first and foremost continue with the plan of promoting closer understanding and rapport between the European peoples to prevent the risk of a recrudescence of forms of nationalism and national self-interest”, and at the same time “move towards a more social Europe, a Europe more attentive to the needs of all its peoples”.Mission to be rediscovered. Cardinal Ricard hopes for “a Europe that is also able to rediscover its own mission, inseparably bound up with respect for the dignity of the human person and human rights, solidarity and the fair distribution of resources, and for a Europe that is also able to pay attention to an international dimension far transcending the continent’s frontiers”: a Europe, in short, “that is not inward looking, but remains open to the world and at the same time is able to make a significant contribution to the search for peace in situations of conflict”. So long as the European Union “fails to rediscover the inspiration to build a more fraternal, convivial and just society – warns the cardinal -, I think that Europe will remain something foreign to even Europeans themselves”. In this context “the contribution that the Church can make” is important, “in particular with her message of brotherhood, solidarity and hope, with her heritage of shared values, and also with her testimony, expressed through numerous meetings and exchanges between the various Bishops’ Conferences, that it is possible to live together in our common European home”. With this experience, concluded Cardinal Ricard, “the Church herself bears witness to ‘an expression of Europe in practice’ and of genuine participation in European integration, at a time when its ideal risks breaking down”.Civil society to be formed. “A low rate of participation that seems even more incomprehensible, seeing that the European Parliament will considerably increase its influence and its powers if the Lisbon Treaty comes into force”, comments the President of COMECE, the Commission of the Episcopates of the European Community, the Most Rev. Adrianus Van Luyn. Welcoming the newly elected MEPs in the 27 member countries, Bishop Van Luyn also points out that “the low voter turnout registered – 43.09% on average – is a sign that a European civil society is still lacking. Insufficient emphasis was placed on its emergence, unlike the emphasis placed on the birth of the common market. European institutions, national governments, political parties and also the Churches must pose themselves the question: did we contribute enough to the emergence of a European consciousness among our fellow citizens?”. Bishop Van Luyn also points out that over the last sixty years European integration has appeared as a unique process in the history of mankind and that it is more than ever relevant now. In response to the economic crisis, climate change, and the food crisis at the global level, there is no alternative to a united Europe that speaks with one voice and that is pledged to the pursuit of justice and peace throughout the European continent and in the rest of the world. Integration must go ahead. “The process of integration must go ahead by fostering and accepting, also on the basis of Europe’s own history, a greater awareness of its own identity”, comments Mgr. Gianni Ambrosio, bishop of Piacenza-Bobbio and delegate of the Italian Bishops’ Conference at COMECE, in a telephone briefing to SIR. “This loss of its own cultural and spiritual self-awareness – maintains the bishop – is the most critical aspect of Europe and results in citizens feeling Brussels to be far removed from their own daily lives, even if they recognize it has achieved important results from an economic point of view such as the stability of the single currency in response to the current crisis, in contrast to what has happened for example in Poland and Hungary, where the depreciation of the currency is having devastating effects”. The disinterest of citizens “for whom the EU remains an abstract reality – continues Mgr. Ambrosio – is in my view also due to the lack of a cultural and political ‘vision’ that is able to respect and foster the various facets present in the continent. Perhaps the EPP, which still remains variegated internally, could be of help in recovering the cultural and spiritual consciousness of Europe as point of departure from which to revive the process of integration”.Promoting a culture of involvement and citizenship. And this, observes Mgr. Ambrosio, “is in contrast to other parties, such as those linked to Social Democracy, which have always rejected this European consciousness, been belated in their sharing of a European vision and have wished almost to impose a caesura on Europe’s history”. “Once again – continues Mgr. Ambrosio in his analysis – in the majority of national contexts the European elections seem to have been a battleground between government and opposition. We would need to ask ourselves how the individual states and the role of the EP could be better integrated”. The EP, he points out, now consists of over 700 MEPs (736, and no longer 785, in the 2009-2014 legislature) “who often don’t even know their own voluminous dossiers”. In the bishop’s view “a lot of work needs to be done to bring Europeans closer to the EU institutions, and not only in terms of institutional engineering”. So what’s the task of the Church? “The Church must never tire of pointing out the basic motivation of the EU: the journey conducted along the path conceived by the founding fathers must be continued. We need to form personalities able to reconstruct the spirit of unanimity that is an essential prerequisite if we are to ascend the steps of integration, and this we should do by starting out from the universities, from culture in general. A serious process of education is unavoidable if we want to bring a European horizon into the minds of Europeans and promote a culture of involvement and citizenship”.