In the essay An Idea of Europe, George Steiner dissects with admirable intelligence the common traits of the European soul. What really unites Hungarians and French, Italians and Scandinavians, Spanish and Germans. Europe is the cafes, the friendly geography and the fusion of the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions. Cafes exist all over Europe, says Steiner. They are the true temples of European thought, from which conspiracies and a good part of the great ideas have been hatched. Until Starbucks came along they only existed in Europe.
Similarly, Europe is walkable; From north to south, from east to west. Africa, Asia and the Americas are not so kind to the walker. Europe is the Camino de Santiago and many other pilgrim routes. It is also the place of memory to the old. While in the United States the streets are named after trees, or have numbers on them, in Europe we prefer to give them the names of deceased and illustrious people. And finally, Europe is, above all, the imperfect harmony of the Enlightenment and religion. The convergence between Jerusalem and Athens, between faith and reason.
But Steiner forgets another feature that defines Europe, perhaps more than any other. We are the result of war and peace. The continent is a mosaic of diverse cultures, which over the centuries have forged eternal rivalries. Since the Middle Ages there has been a constant desire in the great nations (Germany, France, England, Spain... and Russia) to order this diversity under a single leadership, which has unleashed conflicts and wars. But, along with war, efforts to build a balance of power that ensures lasting peace are also part of our common heritage.
The EU is the fruit of that effort. It was the terrible consequences of World War II that fostered the desire, channeled by figures such as Schuman and Adenauer, to create a space for commercial relations in which rivalries between countries were necessarily resolved peacefully.
Thus we come to today, a time marked by a somewhat anomalous start to the Spanish presidency and a terrifying war in Eastern Europe. If someone were to ask about the main challenges facing us as Europeans at this historical moment, the answer could continue to be the same as before: achieving a balance of power and articulating peace. Peace in Ukraine, or what is the same, the containment of Russia. But the time has also come to rediscover a stable balance between the economies of a rich and thrifty north, and a south, ours, poor and indebted, and also between France and Germany, the only two great European powers after Brexit, today each further apart.
Those two challenges will play a key role in bringing Europeans together, just as war and peace did in the past. And who knows, maybe this time around, an authentic European common consciousness will finally flourish, emanating from the emotions of the people, as opposed to a merely intellectual articulation coming from the elites. Is there a chance to foster a pan-European patriotism? Why until now and inexplicably no one has dared to promote it? Meanwhile, today we find ourselves with the question that Steiner asked himself decades ago: What is it that really unites us, beyond geographical proximity? What does it mean to be European?
