A Dangerous European Identity
Holy Island Church, Co Tipperary, Ireland. ”In the debate on a possible common identity for the EU, Adenauer and Schuman have not been alone in their thoughts to base it in Christianity or in Christian values. In the work of the European Convention in 2002 and 2003, to collect feedback, debate and negotiate a new treaty, the reference to God suddenly came up again. A group of members suggested that the treaty article on the fundamental values of the EU, such as democracy, human rights, freedom and equality, would be supplemented by a clarification that these values “include the values of those who believe in God as the source of truth, justice, good and beauty as well as of those who do not share such a belief but respect these universal values arising from other sources”. Without questioning the right to religious freedom, the proposal thus implied every European to support values of which God would be the source, whether they believe in him or her or not. The proposal was defended by the Pope himself, but the Convention President - Valéry Giscard d'Estaing - was not convinced. Any reference to God or Christianity has never been found in European treaties. The introducing preamble of the Lisbon Treaty, however, mentions “the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance”. In his book "Identity and Violence" the award-winning economist Amartya Sen describes how the categorization of people according to religious, cultural or other identities reduces the complexity of each person’s identity and by itself causes conflict. When Samuel P Huntington in his thesis about the clash of civilizations brusquely categorized India as belonging to the “Hindu civilization”, he therefore ignores not only India's 145 million Muslims and give arguments to the Hindu nationalist movement - he denies that all Indians have not only a religious affiliation, but also a linguistic, economic, social, political party, etc. Huntington not only presents a limited picture of India, he also presents a limited picture of every Indian. Whatever religious or cultural identities that we ascribe to the European project, therefore, we diminish the 500 million citizens of the EU to simply hold these properties, and indicate that all the other citizens of the world in some sense do not have that identity. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before Europe will gain the same confidence that its citizens still have in their nations. For nations, however, it took several hundred years, if it was at all successful, and many were the uprisings brutally put down and the peoples and languages suppressed and eradicated in the quest to unify the nation. Such behaviour simply doesn’t fit a union that aspires to be a contemporary democracy with the highest common values. As a first consequence of this notion, all attempts to unite the Europeans by a religion, or to create a common European culture that in itself causes conflicts, must be abandoned”. / (Extract from draft script, during translation…)