Knowing in order to choose

A single Europe or “many Europe”? This question emerges every time we try to trace a profile of the Old Continent. Even with reference only to EU’s current territories and peoples, the Old Continent is made up of different cultures, histories, languages, social realities, economic phenomena,, religions (notwithstanding a broad prevalence of Christians), legal and philosophical traditions, political institutions.. “On the field” identity plurality converges in tracing the Continent’s profile, keeping into account that a steady integration can be implemented only by respecting the thousands of existing particularities. (SIR Europe previous fact sheets n.. 9-11-13/2009)Ethnic and linguistic minorities. Its is easy to ascertain that 500 million “Europeans ” live in the EU. In fact, they are the inhabitants of 27 different States that are still struggling to consider themselves as fully-fledged “European citizens”. A political process to build a common-home has been underway for half a century, but one may also wonder if in the meantime a parallel trend to build a shared mind-set, of a culture capable of erasing frontiers, a “supranational identity” is in the making. This is one of the great challenges the EU has to address: people from 27 nationalities, dividend into 300 ethnic minorities, one out of seven Europeans belongs to a more or less acknowledged and safeguarded “minority” . It must also be noted that 23 official languages are acknowledged in the Community’s headquarters in Strasbourg and Brussels, but according to experts the number of spoken languages in the EU are more than 90, excluding the dialects..From Belgium to Ireland until… Roms. There are many different minorities. With growing coexistence issues, in Belgium there are three linguistic groups: Netherlandish (or Flemish), Wallon (or Francophone), and Germanophobe. A similarly complex situation can be found in Spain, where the Constitution itself is written in Catalan, Basque, Valencian and Galician; very active separatist groups. The entire Irish population speaks English, but one tenth of the inhabitants also use the Irish or Gallic language considering it a strong mark, to the point that the EU was forced to insert it as an official language. There are more ethic and linguistic minorities, thus the EU recently had to tackle the numerical majority of Rom, of nomad origin in various States.Migration phenomenon. Migration flows have obviously carried out an identity “multiplier” role for various decades Besides traditional population movements in the Member States (regional flows) and between one country and another (intra-Community movements regulated by the Treaties) “Non-member countries” migrations of individuals and family members have taken place since the ’80s. According to data released last year by Eurostat “60% of EU migration flows are from Non EU countries, “while 40% in EU member States”. The Community statistics office research- based on comparable data- reported that in 2006 “almost three million immigrants settled in a Member State”.1.2 million citizens of a Member State moved to another Member State; those with a passport of another country were 1.8 million. People (with regular documents) coming from Non EU countries, can be equally divided among Asia (mostly Chinese), Africa (Moroccans ranking-top), Central Southern America and other non EU member from South European countries (mainly from the Balkans and Ukraine) .Old and new “routes”. According to Eurostat’s estimates, the countries which have undergone higher immigration movements are Spain (803 thousand), Germany (558 thousand), the United Kingdom (451 thousand) that alone absorbed three firth of the overall movements. Compared to national populations, smaller States registered the highest percentage of immigrations: from Luxemburg to Ireland, followed by Spain and Austria. There are countries that lack far behind as Poland, Rumania, Latvia and Estonia. Among the many noteworthy “migration routes” flows have been registered from Moldavia to Rumania, from Ukraine to the Check Republic from Bosnia, from Herzegovina to Slovenia, from Albania to Greece. There are also countries that attract mostly community regular immigrants: Luxemburg, Ireland, Germany and Belgium.