in bold<\/strong> by Aeneas’ Quest.<\/p>\n___________________________<\/p>\n
SO Greece didn\u2019t collapse, and Europe began breathing easier. But not for long. Italy\u2019s rebellious voters, who opted for a flamboyant billionaire and a clown, reminded us last week how deeply in crisis the Continent is. Meanwhile, France is going it virtually alone in Mali, and Britain talks openly of jumping the European ship altogether. This is a crisis not just of Europe\u2019s currency, but of its soul.<\/p>\n
If there ever was an emerging vision of a united Europe, it is falling apart for lack of support from its various peoples. Each has its own resentments or suspicions of its partners. But all suffer the same lack: very few of their citizens think of themselves first as Europeans.<\/p>\n
Oddly enough, it turns out, back in the late 20th century, the leaders and institutions of the Old Continent never understood that to build a common Europe, they needed to find, or cultivate, Europeans with a Continental spirit, to give the project a federating mortar.<\/p>\n
How could this be? The history of Europe\u2019s past half-century is usually depicted as step after step toward a common future. But maybe, to understand where we are now, the story should start earlier \u2014 not with the coalescing of France and Germany in the 1960s but with the model of Europe in the decade before the calamity of 1914.<\/p>\n
In important ways, the Europe of 1913 was more cosmopolitan and European than the Europe of today. Ideas and nationalities mingled and converged in a hotbed of creativity. That year saw the height of Futurism, the beginnings of abstraction in Picasso and Braque, the debut of Stravinsky\u2019s \u201cRite of Spring,\u201d the publication of \u201cSwann\u2019s Way\u201d by Proust. Collaborations to uncover science\u2019s deepest secrets jumped borders easily. The architecture of imperial Austria and republican France found imitators in smaller gems of cities throughout Central and Southern Europe; they were called Little Vienna or Little Paris.<\/p>\n
And there were large communities of cosmopolitan expatriates \u2014 \u201cpasseurs\u201d between cultures, notably urbanized Jews, as well as German minorities, scattered throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Though prejudice ran deep and they were harshly mistreated in many places, in others they could identify as citizens of a broader European group, not merely the land they inhabited, and aspire to respect and comfort.<\/p>\n
Later, at the hands of totalitarians, most of the Jews would be slaughtered, and the Germans \u2014 like other groups \u2014 deported to their country of origin. Alongside their greater crimes, Hitler and Stalin thus did their parts to erase the idea of cosmopolitanism as the old Europe had understood it.<\/p>\n
Which makes the usual starting point of the modern European narrative \u2014 the rubble of 1945 \u2014 all the more poignant. An overwhelming imperative to rebuild, augmented by the cold war, united Western Europe and pushed West Germany center stage. Europeans prospered in an increasingly common market. But the unifying element was not optimism as much as dread \u2014 fear of another war among themselves or of Soviet expansion was what spurred West Europeans to bridge differences if they developed.<\/strong><\/p>\nAfter the Berlin Wall fell, Western Europe expanded east and seemed to be serenely approaching the End of History \u2014 peace, prosperity, social security, democracy, with a unifying token, the euro, from Helsinki, Finland, to Seville, Spain. For its more than 400 million people, Europe became a theme park, museum, supermarket \u2014 the EasyJet continent: efficient, fast, open to all at little cost.<\/p>\n
But now Europe asks for sacrifices and solidarity, and it finds itself on the decline. Everywhere, populists and nationalists gain. Managing austerity, fighting debt \u2014 this, it turns out, is no way to unite Europe<\/strong>.<\/p>\nPerhaps Europe\u2019s leaders should have been more alarmed when enthusiasm for unity began fraying even before the crisis. In 2005, French and Dutch voters blocked progress toward a European constitution. Meanwhile, the newly free countries of Central and Eastern Europe \u2014 Milan Kundera\u2019s \u201ckidnapped West,\u201d disfigured by 45 years of Soviet occupation \u2014 hadn\u2019t so much re-Europanized their economies as globalized them. The same is true of Europe\u2019s rising generation; it knows the pleasures of a modern economy. But those are available globally to anyone with their level of wealth and privilege. Apart from that euro in their pockets, Europe\u2019s young people do not feel Europe\u2019s presence on a daily basis.<\/strong><\/p>\nLeaders of opinion, commerce and government generally agree that the Continent could benefit from greater political unity, since globalization favors continental blocs. But the nations and peoples of Europe would have to give up great areas of sovereignty, and nothing has prepared them for this. At the rate things are going, if Europeans are asked to push for unity, they will refuse.<\/p>\n
For that reason, Europe must find a new idea, a new vision, a mortar for the future. Familiar lofty principles will not be enough. The rights of man, pluralism, freedom of thought, free-market social democracy \u2014 all are in the nations\u2019 constitutions; citizens don\u2019t need the European Union to supply them.<\/strong><\/p>\nHow, then, to establish emotional ties to Europe?<\/p>\n
Perhaps the answer is to conceive of a Europe in the flesh, with colors, smells, folklore, poetic force. And variety. The goal is not one formed on familiar principles \u2014 common language or history or bloodlines \u2014 but the very opposite: a supranational, fundamentally Continental cultural understanding and reference point<\/strong>. Mr. Kundera talks of Europe\u2019s \u201cmaximum diversity in minimum space\u201d \u2014 a notion perhaps as powerful as \u201clibert\u00e9, egalit\u00e9, fraternit\u00e9,\u201d or \u201call men are created equal.\u201d<\/p>\nSuch a foundational ideal is the sine qua non of Continental political unity. A European culture at large would allow for ties that no longer exist but used to, when the passeurs and the Little Viennas and the flow of brilliance across borders conveyed what it meant to consider oneself a European.<\/p>\n
It could be achieved through a European civic curriculum in every school<\/strong>; through emphasis on mastering other languages; through increasing exchange programs (across ages and classes); through improving mobility; through unifying European health and retirement systems; through electing European representatives directly responsible to their constituents; through more equal treatment of guest workers and immigrants.<\/p>\nNow there\u2019s food for thought. Fran\u00e7ois Hollande, Angela Merkel and especially David Cameron: remember the passeurs! Encourage the creation of a single<\/em> European public and cultural space. Give us a vision for the peoples of Europe: make them dream of being one people, and leave your ambiguities behind. If you sincerely aspire to a political Europe, then take up the responsibility with courage and a vision that goes beyond the next elections and the next economic bump in the road.<\/strong><\/p>\nPromote the Continent\u2019s spiritual unity, organized around its diversity.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An excellent, in my opinion,\u00a0column on the need to create a European consciousness, and the failure of the European Union and our national leaders\u00a0to do so. The assertion that Europe needs more than just wanting to prevent war or protect rights, is bold, but boldness is precisely what lacks in current European politics (both at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_disable_autopaging":false},"categories":[6599,6,6605],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-european-union","category-politics","category-society-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ellopos.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}