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“It’s not the task of the European Union to become a mini-superpower, but it is its task to be maxi and super in solidarity”, remarked the Archbishop of Dublin DIARMUID MARTIN summing up Europe’s role on the international stage. Solidarity, together with subsidarity, said the archbishop, is one of the founding values that continue today to “support the process of integration”. Intervening at the forum on Europe held in Dublin in recent days, in preparation for the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome (25 March 1957), Archbishop Martin declared that “the European Union is a remarkable achievement. It is the most developed model of shared sovereignty to materialize since the birth of the nation state. As such, the EU is inevitably going to create hesitation among some and indeed it is also inevitable that mistakes in one direction or the other will be made along the process of integration”. SUBSIDIARY AND INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY. “The project of European integration – continued Martin – is a complex and an on-going project on which people can legitimately take different positions”; nonetheless, while reaffirming the autonomy between religion and politics underlined by Benedict XVI in his Encyclical Deus caritas est , Archbishop Martin pointed out that, in the Pope’s view, “the Church cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight for justice”. “The Church’s primary mission is preaching the message of Jesus Christ, but that message is a message relevant to the vision we have of society”. In this context Archbishop Martin underlined the importance of the Church’s social teaching, which on the one hand underlines “the obligation of the State to foster subsidiarity and respect individual and family rights in a participative society and, on the other hand, underscores the unity of the human family and international solidarity rather than narrow nationalism”. NOT SO SECULARIZED. “Europe enjoys unprecedented peace and prosperity. Of course – Archbishop Martin continued – no one single factor can be pointed to as having on its own created that climate of peace in Europe”, but its roots lie “in the European ideals of its founders” which continue to represent “a potent force for peace and prosperity through a process of the coming closer of peoples”. “Others will say to me – continued Martin – that it is precisely the style of prosperity created within the EU that has brought about a climate of materialism and rejection of Christian values. For me, taking huge sectors of the European population out of poverty and precariousness is an achievement about which the Christian must only rejoice. If such prosperity has been accompanied by a change in belief patterns”, this may be due not only to the EU, but also “to a lack of dynamism in the Church’s own pastoral structures for evangelization in a cultural climate that is changing”. But, according to the archbishop of Dublin, the situation is not so gloomy: “the old continent is not as secularised as it seems”, he said, citing the Values Atlas of Europe . SOUND ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES . So what are the values that underpin European integration? “I tend to begin – replied Martin – not with the controversial issues of personal and conjugal morality, but with institutional and economic values. Certainly I would not like the EU to be reduced just to a purely economic organization but it is important that its economy be based on sound economic values”, including “fair competition practices, good corporate governance, sound fiscal policies, the rejection of corruption and the avoidance of the exploitation of national interest or narrow particular interests to the detriment of the common good”. In the archbishop’s view, “the Eu, as it becomes enlarged, should be developing models which aim at fostering at the same time economic progress, social equity and integration”. “The principle of subsidiarity is vital here”. Commenting on the recent economic growth of his own country, Martin expressed the hope that “an Ireland which benefited immensely from the generosity of European donors in the area of infrastructures will be in the forefront in pressing for similar preferential treatment for newly acceded countries which find themselves in the situation in which we were some years ago”. BEYOND THE BORDERS . But Europe cannot be satisfied to work only within its own borders: “its sense of responsibility must always be outward looking. This does not mean that it can just embrace every country as a member and that it must open its borders indiscriminately to all”. While there is no short cut along the path of the economic and democratic reforms needed to join the Eu, countries that complete the process “should not be kept on the long finger”. “Europe has responsibilities worldwide”: its task is not to become a “mini superpower”, but “to be maxi and super in its spirit of solidarity”, warns the archbishop, stigmatising, in particular, certain European positions “in trade negotiations, especially in agriculture and textiles and international property rights” which reflect “particular national interest groups” instead of being aimed at the “common good”.