It’s worth committing ourselves” “

“Many new commitments” to be tackled “with generosity and energy in a frank and cordial dialogue”: that is what, according to the Jesuit JEAN-YVES CALVEZ , is asked of us by the recent enlargement of the European Union, “a question more of necessity than of choice”. Writing in the September number of “Études”, a monthly review of contemporary culture founded by the Jesuits in 1856, Calvez expresses appreciation for the way in which the European Union “has aggregated poorer countries to it” but, he warns, “we ought not to undervalue the impact of the entry of Poles, Slovaks, Hungarians and those from the Baltic States into the EU”. In the view of the Jesuit, “willingness is needed to help them and treat them fairly”, in the consciousness that “it won’t be possible to avoid spending a lot of money for the support of these relatively poor regions, while at the same time being subjected to their competition in various sectors”. EUROPE OF THE FUTURE. “Of the countries in Western Europe Norway and Switzerland have so far rejected the appeal of the EU – points out Calvez -. And for different reasons: linked to petroleum resources in the case of the first, to neutrality and the maintenance of independence, especially in matters of banking confidentiality, in that of the second”. Apart from the ten “new” members who entered on 1st May this year, we need, says Father Calvez, to think of a future European Union that also includes Romania, Bulgaria, and various republics of the former Yugoslavia and Albania; “in a wider perspective, though with lesser chance of membership in the short term, also Belarus, Ukraine and Moldavia”. As for Turkey, “the question has been posed – he observes – but the timetable is of course longer” and its possible admission, “like that of any other Mediterranean country in north Africa, would be a decidedly new addition; it would mean the transition to another kind [of Community]”. AN EFFORT OF KNOWLEDGE. “The enlargement of 2004 – continues Calvez – is especially” and “for the first time”, “an extension to the Slav world”, and that means openness to “another ‘temperament’: more sensitive perhaps, and more ‘affective’. Might one say: more scope (politically) for populism? For great impulses, in any case”. According to the Jesuit, Europe, which “was Latin and Germanic in the past, and more recently Franco-German”, is now, “at least in part, changing ‘character’ and introducing many new languages, most of them Slav”. That explains the need for “a great effort of knowledge by Western Europeans. Members of our generations – he continues – are ignorant of the life, history and culture of Eastern Europe, because they were separated from us for many decades”. EX-SOVIET BLOC. “EU enlargement has included, in the second place, some countries of the former Soviet bloc – points out Calvez -; essentially former Communist countries, and that means, among other things, the inclusion of people who, for the most part, did not have the impression of having been defended or helped by Europe as such; in particular by France and Germany, in no way willing to place in question the status quo of Yalta”. “The Poles – for example – have not forgotten the response of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, President of the French Republic, to Jaruzelski’s assumption of power: ‘I can nothing for you’!”. “Since 1989 the former Communist countries have made it known – and vigorously – that they too felt Europeans, and that they had suffered for this”. There is much, in short, “that needs to be mended”, remarks the Jesuit, recalling that “at the very moment of their entry into the European Union, in spite of the favourable results of the previous referendums on EU membership, nationalists of every kind and composite coalitions of Eurosceptics achieved good electoral results in Slovakia and Poland”. NEW PROSPECTS. “Perhaps we need to consider the former members of the Soviet bloc as more radical and more stringent liberals than the Europeans of the West, as the reaction to their past as a Socialist, ‘administered’ economy”. “The history of the various member countries exerts no insignificant influence – Calvez concludes – and we need to take that into account”. What is certain that “it will no longer be the event, however extraordinary, of the Franco-German reconciliation after the Second World War that will dominate the scene in Europe”. We need, as a matter of urgency, to “gain full consciousness” of this change in situation, because “there are many tasks that await us and that are worth committing ourselves to”. “We could not, still less can we today, refrain from these tasks”; in the view of the Jesuit, “it was inconceivable that Eastern Europe would not be reunited with Western Europe. To reject such a prospect would have been to create artificially, in our turn, a new wall”. ———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1325 N.ro relativo : 65 Data pubblicazione : 22/09/2004