Memory overcomes barriers

Eight months to go to the European elections of May 22-25 2014. Even though there have been – rather unsettling – signs hovering on the horizon (abstention-risk and ‘populist’ votes), the silence surrounding the upcoming deadline is understandable. But changes are in store after September 22, the scheduled date of Germany’s national elections. The political-cultural debate on the future of the European Union is expected to gain increasing relevance and purpose. Refraining from being distant spectators would signal maturity and responsibility, lest it may be a further burden for EU-28 citizens. Indeed, the risk of disaffection from EU community politics is concrete. To avoid that discouragement and confusion may prevail, it might be useful to look back at the progress made over the past 60 years. The founding fathers were well aware that after so many physical and moral disappointments moving on would not be an easy task. Nonetheless, they weren’t discouraged, and pledged to carry out their mission facing obstacles and limits, which yesterday just like today, are the faithful and burdensome companions of every individual and every people. Whilst carrying forth and viewing yesterday’s decisions from a contemporary perspective, memory helps those who feel disoriented, but it does not allow us to seek refuge in a bygone past. Conversely, through memory our obligation is to find the motivation and the intellectual resources in the past, in order to trigger a new thrust leading to the acknowledgement that the future of the European Union depends on a history that is not the compound of national histories – however important they may be – but rather it is an extraordinary joint experience, a historical whole, that wrote pages of hope in the large book of world history. French historian Jean-Dominique Durand said: “Europe, whose erection began in 1950, represents a historical ‘unicum’ that cannot be compared to the dreams of Christian unity of the continent, nor to philosophical or utopian reflections, and less still to military undertakings. The building of the continent’s unity is unprecedented in the history of humanity. It is therefore necessary to stop drawing comparisons with other epochs and accept the idea that Europe’s unification process – its successes and failures as well as its hesitations – stands as a single whole, a completely unique entity”.With a view to the 22-25 elections it will be therefore important to revive the common European memory, hoping that it may gain greater relevance in schools, cultural environments and in the media. It should be acknowledged that without that memory a European Union that is better than the present one would be hard to imagine and build. It’s hard to break away from the spiral of stereotypes, from partisan interests, overcoming pessimism and scepticism. To this regard it is worthwhile rekindling a fragment of our common European memory. Addressing the Assembly of European Federalists on November 11, 1948 Pope Pius XII said – in fact almost cried out, according to historians – that there was no time to waste in the establishment of European unity, “if we want it to usefully serve the cause of unity and European concord, the cause of economic peace and international politics”. In the light of these words the Catholic Church and the Catholic faithful over the past decades have accompanied with conviction, and often as protagonists, the building of the “common home”. This testifies to the decision to be inside history with the intelligence of love. Such closeness provides food for reflection, whereby memory, keeping in line with its educational mission, does not erase mistakes nor is it limited to condemnation. It demands a surplus of responsibility and commitment so that mistakes and limits may not be used as alibis for disengagement nor for destructive criticism. Memory requires a presence marked by intelligent planning and policies. “If we are not able to promote a human and modern ideal within contemporary Europe, at loss and uncertain about the path it should undertake, we will be lost, and Europe will be lost with us”. Exactly sixty-six years have passed since Luigi Einaudi, the second president of the Italian Republic – pronounced these words. Their topical relevance, few months before the elections of the European Parliament, stands out clearly.