About the Statement

For a long time we though that the key factors driving Europe were related to common solidarity, popular advancement, economical development, and a joint engagement between allies to build a common structure: a framework where to design our relations towards prosperity. However, that feeling is gone. We have entered a new period of competition where national governments have forgotten about the value of building consensus among partners and have decided to impose their views and interests on others in a way that threatens the very future of the European Union. The repeated failures in creating general joint patterns of action to deal with the continued line of international crisis and events are driving Europe away from that dreamt future of stability, development and consolidation of the gains from the past decades.

Different states have initiated a new era of disengagement in which their sole national agendas seem to be dictating the way to go forward when dealing with the key questions facing the international community (in general ) and Europe (more concretely). This period, initiated in 2001 in the USA, has consolidated in the current European politics, and so the European powers have decided to act more and more on an individual basis, thus contradicting the statements issued when the EU enlarged in 2004 and 2007. We face a tremendous challenge in Europe if we want to amend this pattern and redirect our policy lines towards a joint project for Europe. We have the potential to face it successfully, but we should not lie to ourselves: the chances for failure are very high too. And failure in the process of building up “Europe” will have very serious consequences in the whole world.

The EU and the notion of "Europe" do not belong to the politicians and the bureaucratic elites in Brussels and the different EU capitals. They do not belong either to the hawkish diplomats, the rich entrepreneurs or the high level officials. What the European political establishment must (for once and all) understand is that the EU and the notion of "Europe" belong to the peoples of the Union, to all the citizens of Europe. Building complicated institutional networks far away from the people's feelings may be an interesting and profitable venture for many bureaucrats but this will never mean anything similar to "the construction of Europe": a common home, a framework of development and progress for all of us. We have to bring the Union closer to the citizens of the member states and our neighbours.

We must recuperate the values and the ideas that once inspired the generation of our parents and ours as well. We must rescue the Union from its own bureaucratic networks, from the grey politicians and the ones who profit at the expense of our own dreams. We must re-conquer our symbols and reform our institutions in order to continue believing in them. We must oppose the system where political decisions violate the legal principles that are the basis of our common heritage. We need to put an end to the use of "double standards" that allow for the powerful to humiliate the weaker.

To sum up, we must stand up and defend the values of the EU that we love, the one that we want our children to inherit. Not the one where some capitals and politicians control the power and impose their will on the rest, but a Union of Nations and Citizens where we learn to respect each other, to share our values, to understand our fears and interests, while we look for joint ways to compromise in the defence of our common principles; in a framework where we recognize each other as brothers and sisters, where we can grow together and dream of a better world for all.



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