AS Ireland hands over the Presidency of the European Union after six months, it is a good time to reflect on what European unification is really for.
President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic said recently: "European unification has never meant limitation of freedom, in the sense of expropriation of certain rights of the citizen by an increasingly distant central power . . . rather is it a process of enhancing people's freedom, by liberating them from the fear of others, and offering them even more room for their self realisation as citizens."
Everything that Europe does, whether it is creating a single currency or a single market, or taking strong action against crime, should be judged by that criterion. Does it enhance people's freedom, by liberating them from the fear of others, and by offering them more room for self realisation?
Europe's task is no longer to rule the world, or to disseminate by force its own particular concepts of how the world should be ruled. But, unlike individual nation states, Europe is big enough to influence the world. Europe's task now is to join with others, to find a global spiritual and moral horizon, so that we may all continue to live peaceably together on the same planet.
Technology has created a global marketplace. The new global marketplace needs a new global ethic. Markets cannot function and remain free, without a shared system of values.
Regulation is not enough. There must also be trust, and there can be no trust without shared values. If the global marketplace is to work Europe must help build a shared ethic for this global economy.
The urgency of agreeing an ethic for sharing the limited resources of the world can best be demonstrated by reflecting on a few statistics.
. In 1950, Africa's population was half that of Europe. By 2025 Africa's population will be three times that of Europe.
. There are 143,000 people per square mile living in the city of Lagos in Nigeria, as against about one twentieth that population density in an average European city. The environmental and health problems of such living conditions are enormous.
. Since 1950, one fifth of the world's cropland has been destroyed by overfarming and soil erosion, and the process is continuing.
INSTEAD of looking outwards at those global problems whose consequences could engulf it suddenly, Europe has spent much of its energies in recent times looking inwards at how its own internal structures can best be reorganised.
This introspective stage was probably necessary, but we have to move on from that task soon.
It is a matter of priorities. Are we willing to pay more for fuel today, so that the world's energy supplies will not be depleted so fast that there will be nothing left for our grandchildren?
As President Havel said, Europe should be about liberating people from "fear of others". Europe today is full of fear. Fear of crime. Fear of ethnic and religious minorities. Fear of immigrants. These fears are dangerously linked together in people's minds.
Europe's task in the 21st century will be to find a way to understand and value, without fear, traditions and religious outlooks that are very different from those of the traditional majorities in Europe.
Europe must devise a new pattern for global coexistence, for sharing resources fairly.
And fairness is a matter not of science, but of ethics.
Throughout human history, religion has been the main source of ethics and values. As the theologian Hans Kilng put it: "Religion can unambiguously demonstrate why morality, ethical values and norms must be unconditionally binding [not just when it is convenient] and be universal for all races and classes in society." There is no better way for Europe to celebrate the millennium, which is also the 2,000th anniversary of Christianity, than to put into practice on a global scale Christianity's generous message of love of one's neighbour, and of love of one's enemies.
THIS is very difficult for a continent whose schools so long nurtured the ideology of territorial and sectarian nationalism, and lergy so often blessed contending armies as they marched to slaughter in the name of national destiny. But Europe has been there, and has done that, and it needs something better for the 21st century.
Ireland, which has seen nationalistic and sectarian strife at first hand for so long, knows better than most how inadequate is the ideology that underpins it.
There is something profoundly anachronistic about living today on an island, some of whose young people surf the global Internet or help manage global companies, while others of them daub gravestones, picket churches, boycott businesses and mark out sectarian territory by marches and countermarches. There is a deep seated contradiction of values here, which has not yet been confronted properly, even by sophisticated leaders of opinion.
A peace process requires tolerance, but it must also be based on truth. Not everything is relative. The truth is that the territorial ideologies that still motivate some of those on both sides in Northern Ireland are profoundly wrong, and have no place in the modern world, and never had anything in common with Christianity of any denomination. That needs to be said, over and over again.
We have a choice in Europe and in Ireland. How do we define ourselves? By what we are for, or just by what we are against? Now that the Cold War is over, will we search the world for new enemies to fear?
If we eventually get an IRA ceasefire, will that just allow us to parade old differences and grievances more aggressively in a slightly more relaxed atmosphere?
We must make a choice, if we are to liberate ourselves from the fear of others.