An intellectual turning point

At a meeting in Berlin on 25 March, as part of celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaties of Rome, European heads of state and of government confirmed their commitment to the next steps to be taken in the process of European integration. These include in the first place reviving the process of ratifying a new European treaty. A lot has been written and said about this anniversary. So I won’t repeat here what is already familiar, with the exception of an aspect on which it is worth dwelling, namely, the fact that the European Union is not primarily the result of impulses of an economic nature. Its establishment was not in fact due to the wish to remove customs barriers and introduce a single currency, nor to demolish frontiers with the Treaty of Schengen. The European Union was born, instead, from the determination to prevent Europe from repeating the horror and destruction of war, which brought the old continent to its knees not once but twice during the last century. For us members of minorities, the significance of Europe in the role it plays in defending and upholding the rights of minorities is naturally important. And in this regard it is worth making two points.First, it should be said that Europe has no direct mandate on the level of the protection of minorities. The member states have reserved this competence for themselves, as they have also done for all others at the level of culture and most powers at the level of education. Nonetheless, the principles at stake are enunciated in the founding documents of the EU. And although they exclusively regard individual rights, these principles are binding on member states. Unfortunately in this field the turning point that would lead to some minimum common standards, binding for everyone, has not yet taken place. And probably this will be one of the tasks of the years ahead. The fact is that the question of minorities was more popular in the 1990s than it is today, simply due to the fact that ethnic minorities then represented a potential threat for peace and stability. Now, on the other hand, interest in the question has waned. So it is up to the minorities to restore the question to the current agenda of the European institutions.The second point I would like to make is linked to the great consideration that the European Union now devotes to multilingualism and multiculturalism. Diversity is in fact one of the founding elements of contemporary Europe. Europeans welcome the processes of integration, the removal of customs barriers, and also the European single currency, even if they consider it the main cause of the increase in prices and the lowering of living standards. And yet, despite all that, the Europeans remain linked to their roots, to their own country, to their place of origin and all its particularities. These also include language and that’s why, no matter how big or small their country is, they don’t want to renounce it. That’s why the fundamental values of the European Union also include multilingualism and multiculturalism as a common heritage for all Europeans, and a heritage which, as such, we all have the obligation to protect. That is an epochal intellectual turning point: if in fact languages until very recent times represented an asset only for those who spoke them, now they are an asset for all Europeans, and, like the heritage of the environment and cultural monuments, it is the duty of us all to protect them. Only once this intellectual turning point is accepted both by the people and by governments will it represent a new dawn for minorities and for their full citizenship of the common European home.