Refecting on the changed nature of Europe 20 years after the collapse of communism, a perceptive British sociologist proclaimed boldly that “we are all post-communist now”.[49] This is to be understood not as a description of political reality in contemporary Europe, but rather as a challenge that European nations and their elites in both East and West must take seriously, if the European project is to succeed. In a similar vein, when Jerzy Buzek, on his election as President of the European Parliament, proclaimed in his acceptance speech that “there is now no ‘you’ (in the West) and ‘us’ (in the East): we live in a shared Europe”, it was a statement of intent, rather than a statement of fact.[50] Debates about key historic events and their meaning serve as a reminder that there are still significant divisions between the two parts of Europe that used to be divided by the Iron Curtain, just as there are divisions between the nations of Europe regardless of their geographic location. Yet, to accept that a Europe of 27 nation-states must live with discord is true to the legacy of EU founding fathers such as Jean Monnet and Konrad Adenauer, as much as it is to the legacy of the architects of the Velvet Revolutions of 1989 such as Adam Michnik and Vaclav Havel. With their mixture of idealism and pragmatism, these Europeans understood that the true meaning of politics consists in accepting dissonance while not giving up aspirations for more harmony.
more from Stefan Auer at Eurozine here.