Surprise: Europe has a soul. Just before the declaration of war by terrorists on our civilisation, a non negligible part of the press (in Europe as well as in the United States) seemed to have discovered that the EU was not only a bureaucratic machinery measuring the size of peas. All of a sudden, following some positive results of European diplomacy, several prestigious newspapers wondered about the possibility of the Cfsp becoming something serious, that Europe could have a soul (environmental regarding Kyoto, political in Durban and elsewhere, and so forth) and growing weight in world affairs. As if this soul and weight could be the result of good fortune, a sudden dawn, whereas these are the fruit of lengthy and patient work that has been going on for half a century and is now gathering speed.
I can obviously only welcome this development, having written a week ago that for Europe the day of self-flagellation was over, having tried to demonstrate the real meaning of European action and having denounced the massive misunderstanding between the EU's reality and what may be perceived by public opinion (see this section dated 5 September). I shall not review the press, but want at least to quote the "New York Times" (which signalled Europe's active presence in the hot spots of the world) and the newspaper that preferred a certain elegant scepticism and sometimes haughtiness. "Le Monde", is the one I'm on abut, which stressed that in Durban, Skopje, Jerusalem and Gaza, "the diplomatic initiative was Europe's", congratulating the "iconoclast Louis Michel" and the "flamboyant Joschka Fischer", and claiming that the EU had the vocation of being a "fully-fledged actor in the world of the 21st Century" despite the "grumpy pessimists". I obviously consider that in many other crucial aspects of world events, like controlling globalisation and the new strategy for sustainable development, the EU is in the vanguard, so much so that it is the "objective ally of those who want the world to change" (see this section dated 6 September).
A grotesque personage. Of course, there are grumpy people, and they are welcome as their presence prohibits immobilisation and self-satisfaction. The case of those who are frankly anti-European in the deepest of their beings in another thing, and I'll mention Ralf Dahrendorf, who wanted to gratify Europeans with his own report of a debate he had had with Daniel Cohn-Bendit in Berlin. Why this professor - following his short, distant and insignificant passage in the European Commission - should still be listened to today on European affairs, remains a mystery to me, as all he has to say about Europe is as empty as it is presumptuous. He again told his unfortunate readers that Europe had a technical nature to the extent that "for certain important aspects it resembled an international postal Union" and that it was "more inclined to bureaucracy and protectionism than the promotion of a liberal order". He also emphasised the irremediable differences between those who "aspire to an increasingly narrow union" between Europeans and those who "have at heart values such as freedom and democracy and liberty". Which tends to mean that Europe's unity is incompatible with freedom and democracy. Everyone has, of course, the right to express their ideas; but when one manages to distort Europe's reality to that extent, one feels like quoting the phrase of an old comedian: "being stupid is everyone's right, but you abuse it!".
I'd like to know the impression Daniel Cohn-Bendit gained from his debate with Ralf Dahrendorf. The newspaper that opened its columns to the latter's wild imaginings ("La Republica") vaguely understood to what extent he had lost his way and published two replies: one well founded and robust from Giorgio Ruffolo MEP, the other weak and undecided by Giuliano Amato, who spoke of Europe as a "complicated and distant machine (…) of which I know not what it does or serves". Yet another one who has been left far behind.
A civilisation to defend. You may have noticed that I devoted half of the first line of this commentary to the ignoble events that have sunk America and the world into mourning. It's that the stances of the European authorities, which we have reported on in this and yesterday's bulletins, are not enough in themselves. The terrorists demonstrated all their hate and even at times cowardice, to which must be added, in some places, manifestations of abject and despicable joy. Henceforth, against terrorists and those who support them, it's a real war that Europe must wage with the necessary firmness to defend our civilisation which, despite its defects and shortcomings, has provided us with freedom, women's rights, education for all those who want to study, generalised wellbeing.
(F.R.).