THE EUROPEAN Union needs a sense of common values if it is to work well as a democratic system of governance, former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald said yesterday.
Speaking at a forum on European identity in Dublin, Dr FitzGerald said the basis for these values had been forged through a “revolution of political ideas” in areas such as human rights, Third World aid and combating climate change.
As a result, the values of Europe and the US have diverged significantly over the past 50 years in areas such as respect for international law, capital punishment and tackling environmental issues.
He said, for example, the main impetus to mobilise global support to tackling climate change had come from Europe, with strong opposition from the Bush administration in the US.
Mr Fitzgerald was speaking at an event organised by Notre Europe, a European think tank founded by Jacques Delors, and Dublin City Council’s office for integration.
“We now need to develop in Europe much greater public consciousness of the overall cultural – and eventual political – implications of the emergence of a distinctive European value system which I believe corresponds very closely to the instinctive value system of Irish people,” the former taoiseach said.
“It will not be easy to build upon this European value system a sense of common political interest that will be sufficiently robust to provide a democratic basis for the political superstructure we have erected to handle our common problems and interests.
“But, without such a common value system and culture, this task will be much more difficult.”
Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole argued there was no common European identity.
He said European history has taught us that attempts to create a monolithic sense of identity were inevitably rooted in hostility towards the “other”.
Any attempt to create common values should recognise the extraordinary diversity of Europe, he said.