Saturday 13 October, 6.00pm until 7.30pm, Felix Meritis, Keizersgracht 324, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
This discussion will be in English.
Tickets: €7,50. Attend both discussions for €10,- Discount rates: €5,- (one discussion) €7,50 (both discussions).
For more information and to book tickets: Felix Meritis
Along with Europe’s ongoing, seemingly perpetual, economic crisis, there is also a European identity crisis, or maybe, a series of national identity crises. Across Europe, many citizens increasingly feel the European Union comes at the expense of their sovereignty. While the European Union expresses more and more forcefully that the EU must stay together, national elections in France, Greece, and soon in the Netherlands, seem to show a degree of resentment to the EU, possibly a resurgence of nationalism. The Europhiles demand we come closer together: the people might appear unconvinced.
Populist politicians reject the EU to defend national cultures often seen to be as much under threat from immigrants, Islam, and international finance as from Brussels. At the same time, however, national leaders, often seem to pass the buck to Brussels, neglecting what their citizens want, hiding behind the curtain of: ”It is the EU that imposes these decisions; it’s not our fault.” Does a defensive identification of what it means, say, to be Dutch, really represent a positive sense of identity today? Or just a feeling that things are out of control? A desire to say no, make it stop? After all, the traditional cornerstones of Dutch-ness (tolerance, the republic of letters, trade) might be said to be yesterday’s news. It is certainly no longer true that everyone in the Netherlands agrees on a common history, a shared culture. Similar issues arise in the UK where it appears that British-ness means all things to all people and, maybe, nothing much at the same time.
What about when it comes to being European? There too difficulties emerge. The Museum of European History project in Brussels, designed to ‘promote an awareness of European identity’, had such difficulty agreeing a version of European History that they decided to make it start in 1946. Is there a sense of a shared European culture that might unite us? Or did that intellectual coffeehouse tradition fail to survive WWII and the Iron Curtain? Is Europe a haven of tolerance and compassion or a wall around a currency union? Are we even sure of where the borders of Europe lie? Can Europe ever be a shared dream or is it merely imagined by bureaucrats in need of a justification for their paperwork? Is the solution more Europe or less? Are we Dutch or British first, European second? Or is it the other way round? And, crucially, who should decide?
 | Dr Thierry Baudet teacher, Leiden Law School; former columnist, NRC Handelsblad; author, The Significance of Borders: why representative government and the rule of law require nation states |
 | Joost Ramaer journalist; guest editor, De Groene Amsterdammer |
 | Judith Sargentini member, European Parliament; leader, GreenLeft delegation |
 | Bruno Waterfield Brussels correspondent, The Times; co-author, No Means No |
| Chair: | |
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Angus Kennedy
convenor, The Academy; author, Being Cultured: in defence of discrimination |
Our national differences are the strength of this continent. And the more they are upset by Brussels’s bureaucratic bullies, the likelier a violent response becomes. The reasonable solution to the EU’s current crisis is orderly dismantlement, like the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in the 1990s. The longer political leaders deny this reality, the likelier a Yugoslavia will be instead.
Thierry Baudet, City AM, 10 October 2012
The budgetary austerity zealously applied by Madrid has revitalised demands for independence in Barcelona. Engaged in a fiscal and economic power struggle with the central government, Catalonia is threatening to disrupt the social and regional equilibrium that underlies Spanish democracy.
José Manuel Pureza, presseurop, 2 October 2012
Differing social and cultural patterns amongst Europeans are all too often overlooked. And this poses a threat to the core of the European project, points out a Dutch sociologist, arguing that political leaders should engage in a dialogue with their citizens.
Gabriël van den Brink, presseurop, 26 September 2012
Crisis is a good moment for an examination of conscience. If war broke out in Europe today, would anyone be willing to die for the ideas of Schuman or Monnet’s community method?
Jacek Pawlicki & Tomasz Bielecki, presseurop, 21 September 2012
Germany, France and nine other of Europe's most powerful countries have called for an elected European Union president and an end to Britain's veto over defence policy in a radical blueprint mapping out the continent's future.
Bruno Waterfield, Daily Telegraph, 18 September 2012
Europe today is suffering an erosion of representative democracy, citizenship and solidarity, making emerging from the crisis that much harder. If the Union cannot encourage an upswing in citizen participation it will not survive in its current form, warns a Polish columnist.
Jacek Żakowski, presseurop, 14 September 2012
I have been a fervent supporter of the European Union as the embodiment of an open society—a voluntary association of equal states that surrendered part of their sovereignty for the common good. The euro crisis is now turning the European Union into something fundamentally different.
George Soros, New York Review of Books, 12 September 2012
We are often told that the EU has brought peace to Europe. However, this view is not shared by historian Thierry Baudet who provocatively argues that a process in which nation states give up their sovereignty inevitably results in conflict. That is why he recommends dissolving the euro and restoring national borders.
Thierry Baudet, presseurop, 9 July 2012
Debate over Hungary's new constitution will revitalise EU institutions – as long as it focuses on politics and law, not culture
Jan-Werner Mueller, Guardian, 2 April 2012
In the eyes of the EU elite, the greatest impediment to ‘the European project’ is the continued existence of the pesky electorate.
Bruno Waterfield, spiked, 8 February 2012
The European debt crisis is a reformation moment – the EU has overreached its power and now faces a crisis of legitimacy
Simon Jenkins, Guardian Comment is free, 15 September 2011
The New Old World looks at the history of the European Union, the core continental countries within it, and the issue of its further expansion into Asia. It opens with a consideration of the origins and outcomes of European integration since the Second World War, and how today's EU has been theorized across a range of contemporary disciplines
Perry Anderson, Verso, 1 August 2011
