A critique and a reply

In 1972 Romain Gary published a novel titled “Europa”. In that complex novel the protagonist, Jean Danthes, an imaginary French Ambassador to Rome, guides us throughout a brilliant meditation on the past, the present, and the future of Europe, in short, a meditation about us. A monetary incident – the relinquishment of the non-convertibility of the dollar currency – occurred during the novel’s publication, triggered the perplexities of the author, as well as those of many European intellectuals, vis a vis the European project. As regards the monetary crisis Gary wrote: “Newspaper editorials competed on underlining the failure of the spirit of Europe, as if that spirit and the Europe of financial markets, of liability companies and of cost prices were in any way related”.Since then, that analysis of the European building, that places a Europe of the spirit and a Europe of the markets on opposite fronts, lingered on. It is to be found in the habitual discourse of a countless number of speakers, regardless of their political or confessional orientations when criticizing the European home. At times of serious crises, such as the ongoing crisis, marked by sovereign debt in euro area Countries, it comes to the fore once more. But that is not fair. Not even the brightest mind can survive without food or water, nor is it forbidden to admire the clever negotiation and the intellectual forces at work in the creation and in the permanent adaptation of the common market, whose rules can be applied also elsewhere. Before the European building, we had waged a war caused by economic avidity, but now controversies are solved within European institutions. Thus we recall and we recognize, at a time of ordeals, the progress of the spirit, and not only of prosperity, carried out in the past 60 years. However, also European integration has progressed. Other skills have extended their field of action to the realm of culture. We may want to ask ourselves whether Romain Gary would still be so adamant in his critique of European integration. A convincing issue could be that of Europeana (www.europeana.eu/portal). This website is at the same time a library, a museum and a digital archive of Europe. On October 28 2011, the European Commission invited member States, in a recommendation on the Europeana project, to step up their efforts to facilitate access to European cultural heritage whilst increasing the number of resources. The European Parliament had previously submitted a request to Member States to improve the content and increase funding of the project.In its recommendation the Commission calls upon Member States to develop programs aimed a collecting 30 million items for Europeana by 2015. There are currently 19 million entries, there were 8 million when the project was launched in 2008. Easy access is ensured with a more user-friendly, interactive, interface. Access is easy and it encourages users to devote to the digital resources some of their time, perhaps on Sunday afternoons.When I entered “Cloppenburg”, my hometown in Germany, 261 images of objects and places popped up, and 73 items were linked to the small French village where I live. Ultimately, at the entry ‘Dante Alighieri’ correspond 873 items including documents, images, and audiovisual collections. A chosen language can be selected in the databank search engine. Researches can be narrowed down by inserting date or place. This website is wonderful. It provides a formidable access to the splendour, richness and complexity of Europe. It opens countless doors to the spirit of Europe. Naturally, a lot still needs to be improved, like access and security. It is equally necessary to promote Internet training courses, considering that 150 million Europeans (almost 30%) have never ‘logged on’. However, thanks to websites like Europeana, Europe could become the homeland of a small élite and of many others too. And I bet that Romain Gary would be happy to contribute to this website’s animation.