Governing the European Union, by Michele Boselli

7. The forces of diversity changing the patterns of identity and belonging to Europe

Forces of diversity are what make Europe unique in comparison to much more homogeneous unions or group of countries, such as for example the United States of America, from the historical and cultural point of view. Many people argue that these diversities are a richness to exploit in the building of a geopolitical entity different from anything else experimented before in human history, others point at the diversities as being too rooted and inconciliable among them to overcome in a unifying project. These forces of diversity are many, but a priority has to be chosen, inevitably reflecting personal preferences, and mine will be to discuss the issues of: a) regionalism; b) immigration; and c) language.

As a matter of fact, regionalism and immigration are sources of diversity often linked between each other: both are strongly associated with the concept of identity. According to James Anderson “regions vary widely in their size, population, levels of economic development, historical origin, contemporary identity, cultural distinctiveness and political activism (or the lack of them)”. We can see for example regions of Europe which are better defined as nations because they have been autonomous kingdoms in the past, like Catalonia and Scotland, where regionalism is strongly supported, historically and culturally, while other regions are simply administrative units with no historical/cultural glue to characterise them. Mainly because of these differences between them, Anderson appears to be very sceptical on the “small is beautiful” ideology of a Europe of the regions.

Similarly but with different nuances, another author, Paul Treanor, marks the difference between the cultural-historical variant of regional federalism and the economic one. The former, Europe des pays, “includes restoration of historic regions, nostalgic regionalism, and semi-commercial regionalism (regional theme parks). [The latter] include sector-based and trade-based regional federalism. Sectoral co-operation is found among declining regions, or agricultural regions. Trade-based regionalism includes proposed restorations of trading leagues among cities, such as the Hansa”. Quoting a document (Prospects for the Future: The European Union of Regions) of Italy's Northern League: “Yet these dreams must survive: they may be eventually realised in an European Union based on a federation of Regions, after the dissolution of nation-states; after all, the structure of the nation-state is a historical artefact functional to a given social and economic situation which will soon become obsolete”.

This may be true, but it is not difficult to imagine Anderson replying that, like it or not, it is still largely the existing member states which control EU integration and define the regions, not to mention that the aspiration of regionalist movements is often that of building their own nation-state, thus being new nationalists, anti-federalists in essence, while the answer to the complexity of governing diversity is to be found in ma ultilevel governance system, with multiple identities and loyalties, like that of the successful Catalan model (Catalonia is one of the “Four motors”) of European continental economy along Baden-Wurttemberg, Lombardy and Rhone-Alpes).

Italy's ethno-nationalist, anti-immigrants Lega Nord bring us from focusing on the subject to that of immigration: “The South continues to create and export people, while in the North the opposite happens, with the Padans dying out. On the other hand in Padania the constant increase in population due to immigration causes a decrease in vital room and quality of life and could inadvertently lead the local people to contrast overpopulation in their land by making less children”. Is is easy to see a profound Catholic mark in this statement, in a country where Catholicism has still considerable influence it could have been released by the Bishops' Conference, albeit with subtle tones. The truth is that while feeling threatened in their regional and local identities by a relatively recent (in comparison with other big European countries) influx of immigrants from Africa and Asia and Eastern Europe, Italians today desperately need their workforce to sustain the economic growth that they have enjoyed. To illustrate the paradox, here are some excerpts from a couple of recent brief articles published by Italian leading daily newspaper Corriere della sera. On 22 February 2001:

The Federation of Farmers [Coldiretti]: “We want more immigrants”
27 THOUSAND MORE IMMIGRANTS ARE NEEDED – HARVEST AT RISK
Coldiretti ask to raise from 13,000 to 40,000 the number of entrance authorisations for seasonal workers
ROME - “We want more seasonal immigrants or the harvests will remain in the fields”, that's what Coldiretti asked during a demonstration in front of the Ministry of labour.

And again less than three months later, on 17 May 2001:

A new decree on immigration quotas 
IMMIGRATION: ALL TO THE NORTHERN REGIONS THE NEW ARRIVALS
The regional distribution of 53,900 new permits
ROME – All of the new work permits regulated by the influx decree for 2001 are concentrated in the Northern regions. The decree foresee the entrance of 50,000 immigrants for permanent employment and 33,000 seasonal workers. All the latter and 20,000 out of the former have already been allocated according to different evaluation of the regional labour market, avoiding Southern regions with high unemployment rate.

A bleak picture of populism and demagogy in a society confronted with such a huge contradiction on inclusion and exclusion, pressures on traditional forms of identity, and still new, undefined social and cultural processes and political structures to deal with them. As an Italian from Milan, thus coming from a country that experienced massive emigration itself, I feel quite ashamed by Lega Nord rhetoric and hypocrisy on the Padania, for “the notion tat Europe was ever composed of homogeneous nation states is a myth” (Leyton-Henry), but I think that it reveals itself for what I is to the intelligent reader and there is no need to discuss it further. Instead I would like to move on to discuss the next, third issue of identity and diversity: language.

Should English be the EU's only official language? This was the provocative question submitted to internet surfers in June 1998 by the BBC on-line “Talking Point” in its website. Not surprisingly for a question posed on an English-language website to an English-speaking audience, 63% of the people who responded said that yes, it should. More surprising instead is the 37% who, in spite of being advantaged in such perspective by already knowing English, said that no, it should not, and some of the explanations provided are very interesting: “A common language for Europe can be a neutral language only [and] only Esperanto can fulfil this condition”; [...] a neutral second language is the cheapest most effective way to bring simpler communication to the world: everyone keeps their own language (and culture) and communicates to other people in Esperanto”; “There are a lot of irregularities in English and it takes ten times longer than to learn Esperanto”; “Only when people are speaking Esperanto they can speak it so easily as their mother tongue and are really equal”; “Esperanto [is] a language designed to be very easy and logical for everybody from diverse cultural background”.

It is always surprising to find how Esperantists around the world demonstrate alive and kicking every time the international language designed by Zamenhof is prematurely considered dead. Zamenohf was a young Pole and Jewish doctor living in Byalistok, a city in eastern Poland that at the time was exemplificatory of the diversities which, grown rotten in hatred and contempt, ultimately led to the holocaust 60 years later. It was 1887 in this city where four languages were spoken (German, Polish, Russian and Yiddish) that Zamenhof developed the basis of a language designed to facilitate people communicate to each other, in the hope (hope is the linguistic root of the word Esperanto itself) that easier communication would have helped eliminate the misunderstanding among the different communities, their histories, cultures and languages.

“There is a strong connection between history and culture” - writes Guibernau - “since crucial elements in the culture of any given community, such as symbols, language, sacred places, heroes, anthems, legends and traditions, are inextricably bound upwith the community's history”. Among these elements, language has in my opinion a prominent role, and Esperanto represents the most accepted way, albeit not the only one, to overcome the problem of the cost of non-communication in Europe. The new European Parliament controversial building in Strasbourg has been built without taking into account that the entrance of new member states in the Union will require new languages to be used, bringing the number of translation combinations and cabins to hundreds. At present, in fact, each of the 11 official languages of the EU is translated into the other ten. Esperantists propose to use Esperanto as a bridge-language because thanks to its accuracy there would be no danger of misinterpretation (as often currently happens). Thus each language would be first translated into Esperanto, and then from Esperanto into the destination language, bringing the number of translation combinations (and the increasingly unbearable costs associated to it) dramatically down.

There are roughly two million Esperanto speakers in the world. They are not many, but they have never coveted for the first place: they rather support its use as a second language, a neutral communication tool preserving cultural diversity in a European Union where – with the obvious exception of the British Isles – 90% of its citizens does not speak the idiom of Shakespeare. If it remains to be assessed whether an artificial language is appropriate like the natural ones when addressing the sphere of feelings, Scottish poet William Auld has demonstrated that it is not a sterilised code but can be used in producing excellent literature. As author Umberto Eco has put it talking about the young Esperantists from different countries who fall in love during their conferences: “Esperanto has been taught in difficult conditions for a few decades, and we have people making love in Esperanto. Latin has been intensively taught for centuries, but even a priest and a nun would not use it while making love!”

In conclusion, we have examined just three of the forces of diversity changing the patterns of identity and belonging to Europe. The discussion on regionalism has shown how it is possible to live peacefully with multiple identities. That on immigration a more striking challenge to the traditional, mainly Judaeo-Christian values that over the centuries have united Europe “against the enemy” but also divided it within. And finally, I allowed myself a less orthodox exploration of a singular linguistic phenomenon that proposes itself as a brilliant solution to communication problems: it may be questionable, but certainly there could be no doubt on th enthusiasm of the Esperantist movement in the colourful family of European federalism.