The value of coherence

Since it was created, the European unity project was aimed at something more than the interdependence of interests. Moreover, its goal is a community of values. In fact, a community of values enables to overcome national egoisms, as ongoing situations have shown. Only through a community of values can Europeans experience their membership to a European unity project and feel enthusiastic about it, an objective which appears to be ever more distant in contemporary society.On which values can European unity be established today? Europe wishes to stand out as a model of human rights for the rest of the world, that include longstanding rights related to freedom and political participation, as well as social rights. The European Convention on Human Rights and the European Charter of Fundamental Rights are the distinctive features of the project. The respect of such rights is the criteria for EU adhesion. It inspires the foreign policy of the European Union.As relates to the principal human right, the right to live, it should be remembered that Europe has historically spearheaded the repeal of capital punishment (my Country, Portugal, was in the forefront of that undertaking), which in fact was abrogated completely throughout the Old Continent. But the same cannot be said for the other (more serious and frequent) attack on the right to live: namely, the condemnation of abortion. Today it is viewed as a right, often referred to as “the right to sexual and reproductive health”. EU delegates have granted a primary role to this so-called right, in the attempt of extending its enforcement worldwide. When, for example, a few years ago the US Administration cut subsidies to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), as a result of indirect cooperation to forced abortion practices in China, the EU agreed to provide the additional funds.The role played by the European Union in the paramount defense of a supposed right to abortion is an abusive and illegitimate policy. Indeed, it is not a question of consensus among Member States. Even though most of these States feature permissive abortion legislation, countries such as Ireland, Malta, and Poland (along with Hungary’s recent constitution) opt for more restrictive measures. In its adhesion treaty, Malta put into writing that its legislation would never be amended by a EU decision.But there has been the case of ABC vs Ireland, in which the appellants claimed a right to abortion under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), along with the case of Diane Pretty in the United Kingdom, who argued her right to die, to euthanasia and assisted suicide.The above-mentioned court cases underline the inconsistency of whoever wishes to be taken as role model in the protection of human rights, by calling on the one side for the abolition of capital punishment all over the world, and on the other promoting recourse to abortion (even though it is disguised as a measure pertaining to “reproductive health”) worldwide. It is certainly not in this way – namely, by assuming stands marked by a rupture vis a vis traditional values shared by many European countries in the area of the protection of life and the family – that Europe will be able to overcome the ongoing crisis, sparked off by an identity crisis. If the values that the EU wishes to reaffirm across the world are values that divide instead of uniting – in fact a large part of European populations consider them anti-values – the European Unity project will hardly become a source of enthusiasm and adhesion.