Europe: A dream with logical consequences

Europe is an idea, a vision, a dream. Europeans themselves struggle to grasp it, to explain it to themselves, let alone to others. Built around an economic union, it is a concept which goes far beyond the financially quantifiable. It is a work in progress, not yet complete. At the heart of it lies the idea of a person entitled to rights and respect for her or his individuality; having duties and responsibilities arising from ownership of institutions which take their authority from him or her. It leads us all down a road which is less than smooth, on a journey which will be well worth making. Europe is a story which the world wants to be told. Europe is cooking up something altogether new.

The enticing smell coming from Europe’s political kitchen wafts across a globe hungry for peace and justice. It is evidence of a success which is often put in doubt, mocked and criticised. It is a work in progress with frequent disappointing setbacks but the fact remains: nowhere else are frontiers more clearly the scars of history, nowhere else have they healed so well. It is a mouth-watering hope for all humanity.

I meet the developing world on my doorstep in the form of immigrants whose European dream founders on this little island, the smallest member of the EU, the one least able to absorb the many thousands following their dream. The reward for their courage in facing the desert and the sea is often a long detention followed by repatriation. They all have high expectations of Europe. Above all they expect to be treated with dignity, as persons not as ciphers. Very often they are not.

The values expressed in the Charter of Fundamental Rights are a challenge for Europe. In affording greater protection to persons within its jurisdiction, it acknowledges the dignity of the person everywhere. Its actions at home or beyond its borders, when in contrast with this driving philosophy, become an anomaly exposing the tensions between economic and political interests with its core ethos. Europe, the ideal, allows a hope that economic interests will not always prevail untempered by considerations such as justice.

The failures are many and in every sector, but progress can be made in only one direction. Europe has no choice. It must follow its logic or fail. It can survive setbacks and temporary halts but its cohesion cannot survive a change of direction. Nor can proceed for long in one direction internally and in another direction in its relations with the rest of the world. It cannot restrain national egoisms internally only to express them as a more powerful, unified egoism abroad. It cannot turn its back on a world in which the poor become poorer to an extent that shames civilization. It cannot survive being the cause of misery, not even through mere neglect. It cannot do so and preserve the dream which keeps it alive and which it shares with all who watch from far beyond its borders. The dream is also theirs.

Harry Vassallo (Biography)