Global Culture

Via oD Today I’m learning about the European Citizens Consultations, which:

provide the first-ever opportunity for members of the public from all 25 Member States to debate the future of the European Union across the boundaries of geography and language. Citizens reflecting the diversity of the population are randomly chosen to take part in the deliberations. They are assisted by experts to identify common ground and make recommendations to policy-makers as these prepare to take decisions on the next phase of Europe’s development.

Jessica Reed from oD Today is blogging live from the event. In her account of the speech given by Daniel Debomy, director of the agency in charge of selecting the participants, very interesting answers to the question of what Europeans think of Europe?:

- Is there such a thing as a European identity? Debomy says that whenever Europeans are asked this qustion they often look startled and disconcerted, thinking about the differences between our countries and cultures first and foremost. But then a few common traits come to mind: a common history, a common love for heritage and culture, a dep seated respect for the environment and diversity, and (you saw it coming) a growing gap between the “North American” perspective and ours.
- Common expectations: All europeans are worried when facing the challenges of globalization, and usually feel protective of the social European model.
- How do EU citizens feel towards Europe? Quite happy, but a bit confused: an awful lot of them feel they don´t understand quite well its Institutions, from which they expect more transparency. They also want to see more results from common action, which they feel are not visible enough.

The participants decided to narrow down the focus of the event to these three topics:

• Environment and Energy
• Social Welfare and Family
• Global Role, Outside Borders, Immigration

While it’s good to see awareness of the need to define a strategy for Global participation coming from its citizens, the specific recommendations around immigration fall short of recognizing the true power of a Global Culture and its impact on Europe: “We want a Europe that acts as a united, strong, independent and proud player on the global level and is open to accept professionally qualified workers from non-member countries”. The usual fear that non-professionals are only going to impact negatively the quality of life of nationals, is clearly manifested here. The model of attracting qualified professionals has worked well for countries like Canada, but it is time we recognize that the majority of people thinking about improving their quality of life are likely non-professionals. This doesn’t mean they can’t add value to a society. The problem is that we only think about the economic output they may generate when there are other areas in which wealthy countries have a lot to learn from the culture of poor countries.
It is important to note that as part of the same set of recommendations, the theme of family is high on the agenda. Family, which is probably one of the strongest values that can be exported by migrants. If only we could figure out how to leverage the centuries of tradition around strong families values to improve the profile of rich societies.