The European prophecy

Europe is the product of history. Outside of history, Europe does not exist. At the same time, it is a grand political design.
This is the Europe we should be talking about. Instead, in our day it has become the target of various and different frustrations, the scapegoat for politicians unable to gather and feed the grandiose political project conceived on the pages of the millenary history of our continent.

We tend to forget that the "idea of Europe" comes from afar, and finds its foundation in the thinking of the many who, over the centuries, have conceived, elaborated, studied and spread it with prophetic enthusiasm.
It is based on the conception of the existence of a common civilization, albeit in a centuries-old historical political context of divisions, hostilities, wars.
Benedetto Croce wrote in his beautiful History of Europe in the 19th century (1930): «Nations are not natural data, but states of consciousness and historical formations; and in the same way that, seventy years ago, a Neapolitan of the ancient Kingdom or a Piedmontese of the subalpine Kingdom became Italian not by denying their previous being but by elevating it and resolving it into that new being, so are French and German and Italian and all the others will raise themselves up to Europeans and their thoughts will turn to Europe and their hearts will beat for her as before for the smaller, not forgotten, but better loved homelands».

These "high" thoughts inspired the founding fathers of the European institutions, contributing to the formation of a generation of statesmen who, after the tragedy of the Second World War, wanted and knew how to translate the idea of Europe into a political project.
The war left the bloody trail of about thirty million dead in the old and weakened continent.
Winston Churchill, in his formidable speech in 1946 at the University of Zurich, recalling the tragedy of the conflict, pointed to the "sovereign remedy": «Rebuild the European family, and equip it with a structure that allows it to live in peace, security and freedom ». The great British statesman, the true winner of the war against Nazi fascism, went as far as to invoke an "act of faith in the European family" and an "act of oblivion towards all the crimes and follies of the past".

On this basis, on 5 May 1949, the statute of the Council of Europe was signed in London, the largest political organization on the continent (which today has 46 member states, and has within it that great monument of civilization which is the Convention European Union of Human Rights). A group of six states (France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg), following the French initiative with the Schuman Declaration of 1950, embarked on the path that would lead them to sign the treaties of Paris and Rome (1951 and 1957), and to the constitution of the Communities and then of the European Union. The great statesmen of the time (Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Alcide De Gasperi, Konrad Adenauer, Paul Henri Spaak, with the inspiration of Altiero Spinelli and the other apostles of European integration) shared the idea that Europe was truly an expression of a common civilization, and that its nascent supranational political institutions should be founded on a system of shared values.

What remains today of all this heritage? The winds of Euroscepticism are blowing, of the dangerous return to nationalisms that led to two world wars, a single European civil war between 1914 and 1945. Political parties and movements born and raised in a desert of cultural poverty today preach “sovereignist” ” (!), oblivious to the lofty teachings of Luigi Einaudi, who warned about the dangers of cultivating “the myth of the sovereign state” (we talked about it in issue 7 of NP, Editor's note). In the era of globalization (of the economy, terrorism, communications, the internet and mass migrations, pandemics), there are those who madly invoke and build walls, forgetting the painful lessons of the history of the last century.

For years, the politicians of the continent have blamed "Europe" for their failures, their inability to govern complex systems. A great leap has taken place: from the Europe of the statesmen of the 1940s and 1950s we have passed to the mostly modest contemporary politicians. There is a phrase that is usually attributed to De Gasperi. The authorship is not of him, even if he evidently knew and shared it, but of the American preacher James F. Clarke, in 1870: «A politician thinks about the next elections; a statesman to the next generation. A politician seeks the success of his party; the statesman that of his country. The statesman aspires to lead, while the politician is content to wander." Neither Clarke nor De Gasperi thought that we would come to be governed not by strong ideas and values but by opinion polls.

The future of the European Union, of the great political project does not lie in the management of the market or of the currency, nor can it be entrusted to new walls. The political project is in danger if the governments of our continent are not able to abandon populism, sovereignty, walls and other similar nonsense in order to recover the great heritage of ideas and values which are at the basis of the construction of the European Union.

Edward Greppi
NP October 2022