Some remarks from the ‘Smugglers’, made during the Euro-summit on Culture in De Balie, March 25-26, 1997
• The European Union seems to have no aesthetic values. Look at the arrogance with which the Eurocrats install themselves in their capital, Brussels. A power that destroys its own capital will not be trusted by artists and intellectuals.
• A welfare state is impossible to organize on a continental scale, for practical, but also for moral reasons. The welfare state is more than a contract with citizens to minimalize risks. It also depends on human elements, on feelings like solidarity. Feelings like these are hard to create inside the artificial unity called EU.
• The EU runs the risk of becoming a non-democratic body. State democracies are controlled by their national parliaments. At this stage, there is no replacement for them on a European level. Take the struggle of minorities: these mostly take place in a national context. National parliaments offer room for the national history, including that of former colonies. This debate will be difficult to transfer to a European level.
• How does Europe deal with its non-European citizens, with those who originate from the former colonies? A united Europe will try to forget its imperial past. But as long as it does not recognize its history, it will not recognize the children of that history. They will remain invisible: non-citizens, with no face, voice, or identity.
• The first question this new Union raises is the question of identity, in a very immediate and practical way: identity checks, the Schengen agreement, passport control, citizenship. Suddenly, everyone wants to know who the other is.
• Europe has an obsession with everything that is measurable and tangible, and with Utopias, fixed blueprints. ‘Smugglers’ and hybrids are suspect. Eurocrats mistrust the process of trial and error. This is a negation of democracy, which should be open and searching. It threatens to make Europe authoritarian, inhumane and artificial.
• The values Europe proclaimed in 1945-1949 (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the founding of the United Nations, the Unesco declaration on race) are now at stake. The best product of Europe as a concept are the human rights. They have been succesfully exported, and have gained a worldwide validity. What other reasons, then, are left to create a fixed identity for Europe? Why reach for unification now that the original values have been globalized?
• In former Yugoslavia, the politicians utilized culture to (re)invent destructive sentiments. Socialism had left a barren climate for an intellectual counterculture. The remaining independent writers and intellectuals left. The ability to change things was limited. But their European colleagues also hardly made a difference. In their loyalty to the new republics in former Yugoslavia, they tended to follow their governments' preference.
• Learning from the Balkan, it is hard to believe in a European union. No nation will give up its sovereignty. No union will be achieved, unless through dictatorship.
• Is it possible to discuss Europe in the ‘non-functional’, non-politicized discourse of artists and intellectuals? Their language is not understood by politicians. The discomfort of intellectuals in the process of unification cannot be translated into a language politicians understand: the added value of speaking about history, the colonial past and cultural identity evaporates. The beginning of the EU is a new year zero.
• A new civilization, a new union, will always create its own barbarians, who will come banging on the door. It is not hard to see which of the European citizens will be pointed out as the new barbarians.
• How can Europe legitimate its future if it does not take its past deeds and ideas seriously?
Het symposium ‘Smokkelaars, een culturele Eurotop’ vond plaats in Amsterdam van 25 tot en met 27 maart 1997, in theater De Balie en de aula van de Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Het symposium werd georganiseerd in samenwerking met het projectbureau Eurotop van de gemeente Amsterdam en de Felix Meritis Foundation/Gulliver.
Dit verslag, opgenomen in De Gids van juni 1997, stond onder redactie van Chris Keulemans, Anil Ramdas, Henk van Renssen en Stephan Sanders.
Vertaling Nederlands-Engels: Arno Beuken.
Met dank aan: European Cultural Foundation, Europese Commissie en de Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Auteursrechtelijk beschermd