Reawaken culture” “

The scant participation of European citizens in the June elections highlights once again the need “to reawaken our democratic culture, to promote informed debate and responsible citizenship”. However, at the same time it calls for reflection on the “duties of those who were elected” and on the system of lists, which “in many countries does not enable voters to choose candidates on the basis of their merits”. JOHN COUGHLAN – editor of “Europe infos”, the monthly publication of the Commission of Episcopates of the European Community (COMECE) and of the Catholic European Study and Information Centre (OCIPE) – in the leader column of the September issue expresses some reserve about the process that led to the election of Josep Borrell as president of the European Parliament (EP). An expression, says Coughlan, of a “tendency to consolidate the power of the political machine, rather than to throw open the doors of our institutions to favour the participation of citizens”. Apart from Coughlan’s own reflections, we offer a selection of some of the different subjects covered by the magazine. DISENCHANTED CITIZENS. The agreement to support Borrell was the result of “a secret accord between the European People’s Party (EPP) and the Party of European Socialists (PSE)”, which in Coughlan’s view “made the election itself a mere formality” and aimed to “divide the cake between the two most powerful groups”, while also giving rise to “fierce criticism”. “Elected officials’ duty towards citizens was relegated to second place”, insists Coughlan. “In the face of such cynicism we must not be surprised if many citizens respond tit for tat. The result is that both democracy and the Euro Parliament itself suffer”. NOT JUST SECURITY. “The attempt by the European Union to create an area of freedom, security and justice” has met with only “partial success”, says CLARE COFFEY. In terms of the implementation of the Tampere Programme, Europe still lacks “a coherent common policy on justice and internal affairs”. Problems concerning “management of the immigrant flow” and asylum seekers require particularly urgent answers. “Security worries, which have particularly increased in the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York and Madrid”, says Coffey, “have placed an excessive emphasis on just one of those three elements [i.e., security]”, with the consequence that the “frontiers of the Union are becoming ever more impenetrable, and those who come seeking protection and help are finding it ever more difficult to enter”. Often “lacking the necessary documents, asylum seekers are taken for criminals and treated accordingly”. The initiative known as “safe third countries”, according to which asylum seekers find temporary shelter in a State outside the Union while their request for asylum in a European State is being examined, says Coffey, “goes against the commitments assumed by the EU and the efforts already made to integrate these people into the member States” and looks like “an attempt to avoid responsibility and put off the problem”. “The NGOs that specialise in the defence of human rights”, concludes Coffey, “are aware that much work still has to be done to protect the most vulnerable people who beg to be let into the Union”. ANTI-SEMITISM AND CHRISTIANS. “We are the victims of anti-Semitism and prejudice. The monster is again among us” said Cobi Benatoff, president of the European Jewish Congress, speaking in July and noting in Europe “an exponential increase” in anti-Semitism, which is reaching “levels unprecedented since the end of the Second World War”. Views borne out by a study on the subject undertaken by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (March 2004). According to GEORG DÜCHS, “European anti-Semitism has over history involved both Christians and the Church. Consequently, it is important for Christians to unmask anti-Semitic tendencies and to combat them actively”. Referring to the Catholic Church’s Magisterium on the subject – from Pope Pius XI’s 1938 declaration of the “inadmissibility of anti-Semitism”, to Nostra Aetate (1965), up to the Polish bishops’ letter on forgiveness and reconciliation which in the year 2000 invited the faithful to “intensify Christian solidarity with the people of Israel” and to “combat all anti-Jewish manifestations still present among Christians” – Düchs makes an exhortation “to pass from good intentions to deeds”. As “the UN Assembly expresses the hope that a resolution on the subject be passed, as the European Union draws up a plan of action, and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is committed to support a programme to combat anti-Semitism”, for Düchs it is “above all Christians who must express their solidarity with the Jewish people”. A commitment sealed with the words of the Pope when he visited the synagogue in Rome in 1986: “The Jewish religion is not extrinsic to us, rather, in a certain way, it is intrinsic to our religion. … You are our much-loved brothers and, in some way, you are our older brothers”.