"For years, Europe has been using the high-sounding word ‘dialogue’, now intercultural dialogue. The bombast of good intentions is no longer sufficient now, what had to be said has been said. We have to do things now, we have to really communicate with the other and lay the foundations for dialogue to be possible". This was said by Nathalie Galesne, of Babelmed, an online magazine all about Mediterranean cultures, as she spoke at the International Talks on European identity and the challenge of intercultural dialogue, which is taking place in Luxembourg. To accomplish dialogue on equal terms, "the social, economic and mobility imbalances that separate us from our neighbours" must be reduced. A hard task, this one, complicated by the cultural drift of Europe, which "saw its credibility collapse as the bearer of great universal principles which enable humanity to federate around a concept of man, in which man’s dignity is the same whenever and wherever, regardless of any linguistic, religious, ethnic, social difference. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, its universalism died in favour of the concepts of identity and a cultural relativism that suggests that some cultures are better than others". An ethnical-cultural vision has spread in Europe, and paradoxically nowadays "the technical-economical globalisations turns out to be a political-cultural Balkanisation". (continued)
