Europe at the crossroads” “

The European Council meeting at Laeken (14-15 December) established the next stages for the enlargement of the European Union and for the reform of the Treaties (see fact files on the following pages). To comment on the conclusions of the summit we interviewed Michel Dumoulin , director of the Institute of European Studies at the Catholic University of Louvain. At the end of the Laeken Summit, Europe is at a crossroads. What must Europe do to avoid taking the wrong road? “Attention now needs to be paid not only to how the Convention will function but also to the foundations on which it will begin its work. There is now no choice other than that of the Convention. It has been said that never before in the history of the construction of Europe has there been an Assembly of this kind. But it is worth recalling the experience of the Convention for the Charter of the fundamental rights of the EU. Nor should we forget the ad hoc Assembly of 1951/’52 at Strasbourg chaired by Spaak, which presented a document on a Constitution for Europe, in which reference was made to a European Parliament elected by universal suffrage and a Senate of European States. Rather like the recent proposals of German Chancellor Schroeder. So it isn’t the first time that the question of a European Constitution has been discussed. I believe, however, that the main problem is not an institutional one; all things considered, the main difficulties of the Convention will be linked to political culture. I’m not sure that Giscard d’Estaing, Amato and Dehaene share the same view of dialogue with the citizen. The fact that they bring with them three different views of Europe is itself positive, however, and may enrich the debate. As regards the Laeken Declaration, it is more than anything a declaration of intent”. From a cultural point of view, why does the citizen have difficulties in identifying with a process of European integration? “I think that a learning process to help the citizen understand the European project is lacking. I think especially of the fact that the younger generations no longer know why the European Community was born at the end of the 1940s. That’s through no fault of their own; a long time has elapsed since then. The young don’t understand that Europe was above all a project to save peace in our continent. The values at the basis of the European project were also various. But gradually the project lost sight of them: it became technocratic and successive enlargements have added other positions: the core of the six founder States had a similar culture; now that the EU has grown to comprise nine and then fifteen countries things have decidedly changed. It’s interesting in this regard to analyze the surveys conducted by Eurobarometer, from which it emerges that people are in general in favour of a European culture, but they are also in favour of the maintenance, and indeed the reinforcement, of national culture and identities. The fact that we have entered a new type of identity is positive: it’s possible to be at the same time close to one’s own region, and faithful to one’s own national identity and to have a European identity. The politicians have had difficulties in explaining why there is no incompatibility between the three. They are three levels that do not exclude each other; indeed they open up a new and undoubtedly more complex way”. What is the role of the academic world in the new situation that is taking shape? “Universities must in the first place come to terms with the so-called ‘Bologna process’, i.e. the need to think and act in the years ahead in such a way as to give rise to an academic system that is not confined to the technical dimension. University culture must preserve its own specific nature by adopting a new way of conducting cooperation at the academic level. The Fifth Framework Programme of Research and Development has represented in this sense an excellent opportunity, which I hope will be improved even further with the Sixth. It is also indispensable to continue to have at our disposal study programmes like those of Socrates and Erasmus: the opportunity for students to spend six months abroad is essential. But we need to go further. The hope is that, thanks to the new technologies, it will be possible to create a ‘laboratory without walls and without frontiers’; it’s a dream that may become a reality, and one from which a new university culture of cooperation may in turn be born”.