Conference calls: Richard Seebohm reports from Faith in Europe

‘We seek to recover the “giving a soul to Europe” concept.’

The European Union is running a Conference on the Future of Europe, to finish in spring 2022. Contributions are invited from anyone who has a case to make, not only from within the EU.

It seems proper to make the case for more prominence to be given to the religious faiths, in particular Christianity, as otherwise it is hard to see why Western values, which largely come from them, should be the touchstone for values in the wider world.

Consequently, a body called Faith in Europe has just submitted a presentation. I belong to it as a Quaker, but it also includes most of the Christian denominations and has Muslim and Jewish representation. Our document was developed in a Zoom consultation held in late October. We offered six headings that reflect our history as chroniclers of faith and political interactions.

Service: The EU provides a platform of justice and law for member states. Its institutions are thus their servants. Some of them, however, may benefit from greater political control.

Solidarity: The EU could do more to engender trust. This would make it easier to have burdens shared. We touched on Brexit in the context of common membership of international institutions, particularly the Council of Europe, with its Court of Human Rights, and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, with its remit on religious freedom.

Subsidiarity: The EU could allow its peoples to take more local decisions.

Stewardship: Values, largely faith-derived, need guardianship, especially as models for the wider world.

Security: The EU was and is a peace project, and as such can be a pace-setter for nations outside the EU.

Sustainability: The EU acting in concert can do more to avert climate change than most independent nations, and it can focus on helping the world’s poor.

These propositions have led us to highlight climate change and migration as our most sensitive and urgent issues, but we also feel concerned about human dignity in the media and other trends that have given rise, for example, to hate speech. And also there is the democratic deficit: citizens need to feel heard.

We seek to recover the ‘giving a soul to Europe’ concept coined by Jacques Delors. This may imply: multiple identities for individuals; neighbourliness and trust; the common good rather than the balancing of interests; promoting world health; seeking equality of opportunity wherever anyone lives, so migration is not their only escape. And we urge our contemporaries to see that younger and future generations are heard.

We followed the conference process by consulting widely. These issues were followed up in events that we also reported (see https://faithineurope.org.uk/eu-conference-on-the-future-of-europe). Much now depends on the character of the next cabinet of European commissioners.

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