Has Europe lost its sense of what it is to be European, or is it yet to find it? Enda O'Doherty, in the first of two articles,explores the notion of a common European culture
The Europe of 25 nations which will formally come into being in Dublin
next May almost certainly represents the most diverse political union ever created anywhere by the free choices of its members.
Different as they are in history, geography, language, culture and religion,it would be difficult to imagine exactly what could unite, say, Ireland, Estonia and Cyprus in a common enterprise other than a belief in the virtue of diversity itself and the value of co-operation for mutual benefit, even between those of starkly disparate traditions.
The prototype of this extraordinarily successful project, established in 1952, dealt not with such nebulous matters as culture, tradition and identity but the more solid properties of coal and steel.
After three conflicts between France and Germany in 70 years, and perhaps four million dead, Jean Monnet, with his plan for common administration of the two states ’ coal and steel resources –the raw materials of any armaments industry –aimed to make war "not only unthinkable but practically impossible ".
The six states which came together as the European Economic Community after the Treaty of Rome(1957)formed a relatively homogeneous body, being mostly Catholic in religion and Christian Democratic in politics; they also occupied a territory, in "middle western Europe ",strikingly similar to that of Charlemagne ’s Holy Roman Empire of more than a thousand years earlier.
All had suffered in the war and were now run chiefly by cautious, practical men of the centre, devoted to economic and moral reconstruction and the marginalisation of political extremists.
The communists, powerful in France and Italy, were frankly hostile to what they saw as a capitalist (or even neo-fascist)project, while many socialists and social democrats were also initially lukewarm.
In the face of such opposition "Europe "was an idea its promoters had
to fight for, and in their attempts to win support for it from their own
electorates they emphasised the notions of friendship between nations
(particularly former enemies),the building of a new prosperity based
on dismantling barriers to trade and travel and the establishment of a
hitherto undreamt of degree of supranational planning and direction.
While the new ideology of Europeanism was normally treated with
scepticism bordering on hostility by nationalist forces such as Gaullism,
it could also on occasion be appropriated as a stick with which to beat
others.
Thus in 1963 the French vetoed the Macmillan government ’s application for EEC membership, de Gaulle representing his neighbours across the Channel as too close to their American ally and therefore in- sufficiently European.
The British chose to see in this a certain French hypocrisy and a desire to dominate the Community and exclude any rival for leadership. "He [de Gaulle ] speaks of Europe and thinks of France," Macmillan fumed.
Successive enlargements of the Community (later Union)have undoubtedly led to some dilution of its original character, purpose and cohesion and it is perhaps no surprise that a desire to move forward again, in a smaller group if necessary, has re-emerged in some of the core countries.
Culturally, the predominantly Catholic character of the original Community would have been significantly modified by the entry in 1973 of Britain, Denmark and Ireland.
The accession of Greece (1981)and Spain and Portugal (1986)brought
in a southern or Mediterranean axis, whose new political and administrative elites were not necessarily Catholic –they might equally be secular and leftish –but were often culturally Francophile.
Finally, the entry in 1995 of Austria, Sweden and Finland included three states which were outside the NATO alliance, which had achieved
high levels of prosperity in the post- war period and whose societies had
been shaped by the modern social democratic principles of progress,
consensus and inclusion.
They were also largely outside the French cultural sphere.
It may seem strange to some to talk about the European Union in
cultural terms at all, since it is only since the Maastricht Treaty (1992)
that it has accorded itself any capacity to act in that sphere, a capacity
that still remains rather limited.
Yet the notion that Europe, in spite of differences of language and
custom, is at bottom a cultural unity is one that goes back many centuries,to the Renaissance at least.
"Europeans of the Christian religion," the German philosopher Fichte wrote in 1805,"are in reality a single people and recognise as their sole true fatherland that Europe which is their common home."
(The Europeans not of the Christian religion were of course the Turks.)
If the EU has thus far not given much consideration to itself as a cultural area this may be partly because of the very technocratic focus of its founding fathers, and partly also because another quite separate cultural and human rights organisation, the Council of Europe, is already in the field.
It may also be due to the fact that the EEC/EU is not, as sceptics of
both right and left never tire of reminding it, exactly coterminous
with the geographical entity of Europe, stretching, according to convention, from the Atlantic to the Urals.
But if in the past the Common Market or EU was not quite Europe,
the accession of 10 new countries somewhat changes the game.
The addition of three Baltic states, two Mediterranean and above all five central European ones with a joint population of 66 million, allows for a "filling in of the blanks "on the European map in a
quite significant way.
And if previous expansions of the Union were inconclusive from a cultural standpoint or tended to cancel each other out, the same can scarcely be said of the imminent arrival of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia, a group of nations with a common political history, a common, though hybrid, culture and a long and continuing record of high intellectual and artistic achievement.
After decades of torpidity, cultural Europe may just be about to experience its big bang.
Tomorrow: Strength in diversity