Why don’t Europeans Celebrate Europe’s Day?

Why don’t Europeans Celebrate Europe’s Day?  

Porquoi les Européens ne celèbrent pas le jour de l’Europe ?

Warum feiern die Europaeer nicht den Tag von Europa?

 почему бы не европейцы отмечают День Европы?

 

During the Day of Europe 2012 at the Circolo dei Lettori of Torino, Franco Cardini had expressed the deep frustration of Europe-loving intellectuals following to the non compliance, by Europe, with the promises contained in the Schuman  Declaration of 1951.

As it will be emphasized this year by some of the speakers at the celebration at the City Hall of Torino, the European Establishment (including European Authorities, National Governments, political and cultural elites) ,ignore, and even seem to suppress, this celebration. We have gone through different websites, in order to see, what people are doing, for this anniversary, Europewide, but especially in Turin and in Piedmont, and the outcomes are, as it goes without saying, as negative as ever.

 The prevailing explanation for this is that, because of the crisis of the Eurozone, the EU has reached the lowest point of its credibility. On the contrary, according to us, the reasons thereof are by far older. They arose already at the same time as the Schuman Declaration .In any case, the latter could not have been considered as a festival, if we take into account the condition in which we, the Europeans, had been reduced at that time. 

No doubt that, deliberately, the Declaration was something very limited. Which, from another point of view, would not have had any sense if there had not been some hope that, immediately thereafter, a new kind of people would have dominated the scene, people  bound by far less, to the establishment, and willing to affirm an autonomous European Identity. Such people could have been, for instance, the Federalists, De Gaulle, Helmut Schmidt, Servan-Schreiber . However, all of them , at their moment, after having completed their recitals, instead of becoming the warrying heroes of Europe, bent gently aside.

It is, however, too easy to attack always “the other”.

All of us have our own heavy liabilities, first of all a cultural one. During the many decennials which have elapsed since the Schuman Declaration, all of us would have had all the opportunities to re-address their own professional paths towards Europe, to focus on the study  of European history, to devote ourselves to European politics. All things which have not been done in the correct way by anybody.

Nowadays, such reflection and such engagement are necessary precomnditions for a new start. However, we cannot have,now, any reverence towards anybody: neither for the politicak establishment, nor for the USA, neither for Member States, nor for “maîtres à penser”. If a Europe would go on to exist as such, it Europe will necessarily disagreeable to many: no more junior partner, it should
have a pan-european political class, with pan-european political parties, and an integrated and assertive political system.