Europe's ideals and values seem lost on its own citizens

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/europes-ideals-values-eu-lost-on-its-citizens

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Recently I was celebrating the so called Europe Day by taking part in the European Writers Conference in Berlin. They drove us through the town in new black BMW 7 Series limousines; Frank-Walter Steinmeier, federal minister of foreign affairs, gave the opening remarks; and it was held in the Deutsche Bank International Forum … everything we writers secretly like while we pretend to be hard boiled leftists.

The conference was all about ideals, humanism, European values and the meaning of Europe. My favourite line of the first day was, "Compared to the Europe of concentration camps, this Europe brings hope."

It seems that the people outside Europe don't have a problem defining what Europe is. People in the Maidan in Ukraine were dying with the world "Europe" on their lips; people from Europe's periphery, like myself, are waiting in line to become EU citizens; immigrants from Africa are drowning in the Mediterranean trying to get to Europe.

But it seems that by "European values", outsiders and Europeans mean different things. Hegel wrote that the secrets of the ancient Egyptians were a secret to the ancient Egyptians themselves. It might just be that European values are a secret to the Europeans, too.

A few years ago I was in Prato, Italy, attending a conference called Is the EU dead? We, the participants, agreed that, yes, it was. Waiters in cafes, receptionists in hotels and ticket-sellers in theatres agreed, too. Actually, all the citizens of Prato I talked to firmly believed that the final countdown for EU-doom had begun.

The morning after the conference I woke early and took a walk. Prato was free of people, and therefore irresistible. It was a cold morning – even Toscana can be cruel in February – but I had my coffee outside so that I could smoke. I was thinking about how the smoking ban is a travesty of European values – if our civilisation was good at anything, it was killing people. Smoking kills, of course, but so does the state. In the smoking ban I saw the tendency of the state to monopolise the right to legal killing.

Then came an African. He was carrying a few lighters, a plastic watch and three Snickers bars, and was offering them for sale. He tried to sell me his goods speaking Italian, and was delighted when I said "no" and, in English, offered him a coffee instead. "Don't be confused by the fact that I'm an educated man," he said to me. He was a master of electrical engineering. He left Nigeria after his parents were killed. He was talking about the equilibrium constant, about Immanuel Wallerstein's theory of the world system, about the weak integrative forces of the EU … "Are you sure you don't need a lighter?". I was sure. Then he said, "Enough of this chit chat, I have business to do," and he left.

During the day, many African immigrants are walking on the streets of Prato selling frippery. At night they go to cafes and restaurants selling roses to couples in love: one rose, €2. The same day Predrag Matvejević, a wonderful Yugoslav leftist, said to me, "You know, I peeked into the cathedral where a priest from Africa was holding a service – it brings hope." Matvejević is a good man – a good man tends to see hope in everything.

For 63 years straight the left won all the elections in Prato. Then the centre-right won. They won because of fear. We all know how it goes: the left wins because of hope, the right because of fear. The citizens of Prato were afraid of the Chinese – they told us that tens of thousands came to Prato. They were afraid of Africans, too. Some of them approved a ban of all non-Italian restaurants in the city centre.

I was thinking in Prato the same thing that I was thinking in Berlin: are European values universal, or are they reserved only for Europeans? If the second answer is correct, then Europe is more like a gentleman's club. And if that's the case, why should anybody outside of that club care about it and its "values"?