London Festival of Europe

by Maira Bartoloni, cafebabel.com

Last Sunday’s conference took off with some fundamental question for the case of European Identity: what does it mean to be an European? How do you define a common European space and European common values?

That’s how Maurice Fraser, teacher at LSE who also edited the book Europe: the Next Fifty Years, introduced the evening’s ‘first grade’ panel: Kalypso Nicoladis, Director of the European Study Centre at the University of Oxford, Calin Cotoi, a sociologist at the University of Bucharest and Charles Grant, Director of the Centre For European reforms.

Common values, common identity: a dangerous territory with fragile boundaries. As Maurice Fraser pointed out in his introduction, is not just a matter of people coming from very different nations with distinctive culture within the community but also of singular families or individuals that come from mixed backgrounds, European and not. Colin Cotoi rightly argued that it is almost impossible to find treads shared by all European and not by non-European. And he made a fundamental point: since identity is needed as a glue to create the sense of belonging without which conflict and chaos would arise, also the idea of ‘the others’ is compulsory to define us against them. But how can this be possible in a society so diverse and mixed in itself? And how can we avoid exclusion in our own community and the evil consequences of that?

As to confirm this, when Kalypso Nicoladis asked the public how many people where 100 percent from one place, only few hands raised. And even to that, she pointed out that ‘you might have born like that, but your ideas and experience might be mixed.’ Especially today when new generation take the free movement of people around Europe as granted and therefore move.

And here comes the central, cardinal question: are we European? Why?

According to Kalypso, maybe because we choose to be and therefore we need to understand the way in which our story is changing to keep us together in our communal differences.

And what do we represent for the rest of the world?

Europe could be a laboratory to create a model which can be global but we need to be careful in the will to export our model: it is a big responsibility and, as Kalypso pointed out, the greatest challenge is to figure out how to play this responsible role of a global model.

Talking about identity and Europe as a model we cannot forget the issue of enlargement. Charles Grant proclaimed himself as committed to a larger Europe; a community able to spread prosperity peace and democracy around.

He added that countries are easier to control when they are inside the union even though their approach to democracy is different, or is understood on a different level. Of course advantages cannot exist without disadvantages. An enlarged community is stretched to countries with distinctive histories, which can make it harder for the decision makers to forge a common approach and common policies.

Thus comes again the need for a shared identity; the more we understand our common values the easier would be to make the process of enlargement work.

What are we looking for then?

I agree with Calypso on the fact that we do not necessarily need a European Identity but we should work towards a European project. Common traits are impossible to find but I believe that common project is a synonymous to common values; the community, the ‘us’, is made of people that through different means (the London Festival of Europe is one of many examples) is trying to create something that we all share and that makes us all citizens of the same enlarged country, cultivating the ground for this project to grow up strongly and with deep, firm roots.