Europe, Headlines

POLITICS: European Right Divided Over Islam, Enlargement

Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Sep 26 2005 (IPS) - Three days did not suffice for a consensus to be reached among the right and centre-right forces in the European Union (EU), which are divided over the future composition of the bloc, and even more so over relations with the Muslim world.

For moderate conservative Chris Patten, the former EU external relations commissioner (2000-2004) and previously the last British governor of Hong Kong, the main challenge now is to reconcile the East with the West.

This stance, however, was forcefully opposed by former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar (1994-2004), who retorted, “I don’t need to reconcile myself with anyone.”

“I believe in the West, our civilisation is better, and I’m prepared to defend it,” declared Aznar at the meeting in Lisbon last Thursday through Saturday of the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats in the European Parliament (EPP-ED Group).

Aznar took advantage of the meeting to unabashedly express the most radical viewpoints of the European right.

“I believe in an Atlantic-facing Europe,” he stressed, adding that the future of the EU should be oriented in this direction. “Another Europe is neither possible nor desirable,” and geographical limits need to be imposed, he added.

“The sole cause of Islamic terrorism is hatred, and reconciliation is not the solution,” Aznar further stated.

The former prime minister, who belongs to Spain’s Popular Party (PP), also referred to the need to “give the European club an Atlantic orientation and recover its traditional and Christian values.”

Using far more measured language to soften the impact of what could be interpreted as a direct attack on Turkey’s aspirations to EU membership, EPP-ED chairman Hans-Gert Poettering acknowledged that there are “different views” on this question. Nevertheless, he admitted to being convinced that in economic, financial and cultural terms, Turkey would represent a burden to the 25-member bloc.

Poettering, a German MEP, advocated discussing the limits of EU enlargement based on its capacity to absorb new members, stressing the need to define just how far this process can go.

Representatives of the EPP-ED Group met for three days in Lisbon to discuss current European issues and concerns as part of the Fourth Summer University organised by the European Ideas Network (EIN), a think tank sponsored by the group.

Also participating were former Portuguese prime minister and current European Commission president José Manuel Durao Barroso, former Belgian prime minister and current EPP president Wilfried Martens, and former prime ministers Aníbal Cavaco Silva (1985-1995) of Portugal and Carl Bildt (1991-1994) of Sweden.

Martens commented that meetings like these help to promote national debates that serve to reflect on the EU’s role as a world power.

He noted that PPE members are in power in the majority of European countries today, and said he hopes that Germany will soon be joining this group of nations under the leadership of Angela Merkel.

Although Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic alliance came in first in the Sept. 18 elections, it failed to win the majority needed to form a government, leaving her no choice but to negotiate with her Social Democratic opponents, led by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Meanwhile, in Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Poland, the preliminary results show the conservative and liberal (in economic terms) parties finishing in first and second place , signalling a clear shift to the right.

A few EPP-ED Group members questioned by journalists were willing to comment on Aznar’s rather controversial statements, but on the condition of remaining anonymous.

“It’s true that Aznar exaggerated in his comments, but it should also be stressed that a lot of those who are here would have said almost the same thing, although perhaps not quite so undiplomatically, if they didn’t have governmental, parliamentary or party responsibilities,” a Belgian delegate admitted to IPS.

For his part, a German deputy told IPS that he fully agreed with Aznar that “the main threat facing Europe is Islamic terrorism,” but he disagreed with the former Spanish prime minister’s stance that the solution lies not with a reconciliation between the East and West, but rather with an open and determined fight against “the hatred felt by fundamentalists towards Westerners.”

At one point in his remarks, in what many viewed as open hostility towards the more moderate Patten, Aznar declared that Islamic terrorism is the greatest threat faced by Europe because “they want to destroy our society.”

“They have declared war on us, and we have to decide whether we are going to defend ourselves. And if we decide to defend ourselves, we have to decide whether we are doing it to really win, because playing at pacification doesn’t work. They want to destroy what we are, not what we do,” said Aznar.

European Commission president Durao Barroso avoided entering into this thorny subject area and concentrated instead on economic and social questions.

“The construction of Europe must be open to the changes brought by time,” he said, stressing the need for internal reforms to confront the transformations brought about by globalisation, “because 20 million unemployed is unacceptable from a social point of view.”

The conservative former Portuguese leader, who has headed up the EU executive arm since last year, said that the future of the EU will depend on “taking better advantage of the benefits of globalisation,” through greater internal opening in relations among member countries and their institutions and citizens.

Political union cannot exist without economic integration, he stated. “The two must go hand in hand,” in a framework of social justice and competitiveness, he added.

Durao Barroso said that the EU could benefit from globalisation, but in order to do so, it must make urgent changes to its economic and social structures to compete with emerging markets like India and China, which have proven to adapt easily to the global economy.

The EU must learn to adapt to change, despite the fact that “ironically, this is one of the greatest threats facing Europe,” given the risk of the emergence of “anti-European populist currents,” Durao Barroso concluded.

In contrast to the opposition expressed by Aznar and other more radically conservative delegates to eastward EU expansion, former European Commission vice president Loyola de Palacio, also from Spain, spoke out in favour of Turkey’s entry into the EU.

She concurred with fellow PP member Aznar, however, in that the EU should walk hand in hand with the United States.

Referring to Turkey, she also stressed that in order to join the EU, Muslims “have to accept our society, and that means the secularisation of the population and the state.”

“The best instrument to support the process of the secularisation of the Turkish state and society is by continuing negotiations, because without this, its admission to the Union would be an impossibility,” she said, adding that “there are universal values, like equality, the state of law, democracy, justice or freedom, that are above any cultural relativism.”

She said the EU must adapt to today’s reality, “which is not the same as yesterday’s, and will not be the same as tomorrow’s,” and underlined that “Europe must play a leading role in globalisation.”

The first step towards this objective, she said, is for the heads of government and state of the 25 EU countries to come to an agreement on how to confront the challenges of a globalised world, “which we cannot avoid. We must either adapt to it, or remain stagnant.”