These xenophobic and anti-European forces, which we witnessed during the last elections of the European Parliament, ranging from different corners of the Old Country, seem to be driven by the fear of losing their own identity. This identity is still enclosed between singularity and particuliarism and has always represented the beacon and the strength to which people have clung to during moments of crisis, lack of certainty or stability.
Nevertheless, it is now time to ask ourselves whether this solution is effective or it represents just the simple illusion to find anew within ourselves - those answers and the certainties that political institutions are unable to guarantee.
First and foremost, we must start from the key axiom according to which a single person cannot exist without meeting, confronting himself/herself and even clashing with the other, the stranger, the foreigner. The meeting/clashing dichotomy allows us to come closer to our identity, thus finding out it’s most hidden and most relevant aspects.
Sixty years after the Schuman Declaration, we have to remember and rediscover our responsibilities not only towards ourselves, but also towards history.
we have to remember and rediscover our responsibilities not only towards ourselves, but also towards history.
We have to reaffirm with a strong and steady voice that realism and utopia pervade each other while trying to hold back the disintegrating impulses, unavoidable consequences of an interior struggle fought in order to reach a hegemony that does not exist anymore, and while trying to rediscover strength and balance within the European federation.
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