” “Defining and describing such values as peace, freedom, tolerance, solidarity, justice, defence of the person, which, although not bexclusively Christian values, are deeply rooted in the Christian tradition. This is the goal of "A Europe of values the ethical dimension of the European Union", the report submitted by the "Committee of the Sages, established within Comece, the Commission of the EU Bishops Conference. The report was submitted in Rome today by mgr. Adrianus van Luyn, president of Comece, the secretary general of the Commission, mgr. Noel Treanor, and Mario Monti, president of Università Bocconi, ex MEP, who was a member of the Committee of the Sages. And it was precisely the latter who recalled that "Europe is not a system without values, and that guilt that seems to grip the EU institutions is wrong", especially when the European citizens bring to the fore "dissatisfactions and doubts", as it happened with the Danish referendum on Maastricht (1992) and the constitutional ones of France and Holland (2005). "The citizens see the EU as a distant, expensive bureaucratic machine", this is why, said Monti, "we must bring Europe close to them again, bearing in mind that the European project rests on an ethical view of life and society. The note reverses such view". (to be continued)” “
