Two legacies of 2011

The President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, posed a fundamental question to the European Parliament at Strasbourg in mid-December: a question to which, for the time being, no answer exists. The question is this: Will 2011 be remembered as an “annus horribilis”, due to the worsening economic and financial crisis, or will it go down to history instead as an “annus mirabilis” in which Europe’s leaders sought common, concrete and lasting responses to prevent devastating recessions on this scale from ever happening again in future?The last twelve months have been characterized, at the continental level, by attempts to curb the crisis, and contain its destructive effects on the real economy, on jobs, on families and – perhaps especially – on state finances. It’s a situation such as to lead some authoritative commentators and political leaders to observe that we are faced not by a crisis of the euro, but by a crisis of national budgetary policies and the control of national public accounts. The single currency, whatever the case, has been at the centre of debate throughout 2011: it has been perceived as a kind of princess locked in the tower, waiting to be rescued with courage and carefully planned actions. With one basic conviction: namely, that there are no alternatives to monetary union, shared governance and the single European market. So the EU, with its member states, cannot but move in this direction if it wants to withstand global competitiveness. That’s why the new President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, again addressing MEPs, declared on 19 December: “I have no doubt about the irreversibility of the euro”. Yet the year that is about to end leaves us at least one other great legacy, which cannot be ignored: the “Arab Spring”. It’s enough to focus our thoughts for a moment on the ferment of freedom, democratic hopes, civil passions, protests and uprisings, some violent, others peaceful, sacrifice and heroism, that have unexpectedly thrown into turmoil the Mediterranean and the Middle East. These are regions, on the doorsteps of the European “common home”, that have for too long been considered crystallized, stagnant, caught in an unmoveable medieval past and, also for this reason, considered hostile to the West, characterized instead by rapid change, consumerism and globalization. Once again, it was the European Parliament that warned us, on 14 December, that the award of the Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought to five exponents of the “Arab Spring”, respectively in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria, that no people can be kept under a yoke for too long without a rekindling and resurgence of the yearning for freedom and justice that are the inalienable birthright of every man and woman born into this world. Moreover, this new “spring” – though still incomplete, at times in disarray, or even betrayed – tells us that democracy, human dignity and fundamental rights can never be taken for granted but are a heritage that needs to be sought, promoted, and built on day after day, both in Europe and in the world. It’s no accident that the North African and Middle Eastern uprisings of recent months have often been compared with the events that led to the fall of the Iron Curtain, and that had a never-to-be-forgotten rallying point in the Czech President Vaclav Havel, who died in recent days. The President of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, recalling the charismatic leader of the “velvet revolution”, rightly affirmed that the name of Havel “will always remain linked to the reunification of Europe”; he is also “a source of great inspiration for all those who are now fighting for freedom and democracy throughout the world”.