Between 2004 and 2007, ten countries that had previously belonged to the Warsaw Pact, Yugoslavia and the USSR, joined the European Union, politically, but militarily, they joined the Atlantic Pact and its integrated military component under American command and armament, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Negotiations, in accordance with the unwritten language rules of these two organisations, were conducted in English, ensuring the supremacy of this language in the workings and external manifestations of the European institutions, even though it is a minority language in the population as a whole.
Despite the European Cultural Charter of 1954, European cultures and languages were no longer a priority for Europeans.
We all remember 1971, proclaimed by Henry Kissinger to be the "Year of Europe", with a new Atlantic Charter, of which none of the European leaders had been informed. Europe's response, launched by the very European British Prime Minister Edward Heath and drawn up with Georges Pompidou and his foreign minister, Michel Jobert, was the declaration on European identity, known as the "Copenhagen Declaration", approved at the European summit on 14 and 15 December 1973.
This text, which was immediately forgotten, deserves to be recalled through a few extracts:
Wishing to ensure respect for the legal, political and moral values to which they are committed, anxious to preserve the rich variety of their national cultures, sharing a common conception of life based on the desire to build a society conceived and realised in the service of mankind, they intend to safeguard the principles of representative democracy, the rule of law, social justice - the ultimate aim of economic progress - and respect for human rights, which are fundamental elements of European identity...
This variety of cultures within the framework of a single European civilisation, this attachment to common values and principles, this rapprochement of conceptions of life, this awareness of having specific interests in common and this determination to participate in the construction of Europe give the European identity its original character and its own dynamism.
The changes which have taken place in the world and the increasing concentration of power and responsibility in the hands of a very small number of major powers mean that Europe must unite and, increasingly, speak with a single voice if it is to be heard and play its rightful role on the world stage...
The Nine, whose essential aim is the maintenance of peace, will never achieve this by neglecting their own security. Those who are members of the Atlantic Alliance consider that there is at present no alternative to the security provided by the nuclear weapons of the United States and the presence of North American forces in Europe; and they agree that, in view of its relative military vulnerability, Europe must, if it wishes to preserve its independence, keep its commitments and ensure, in a constant effort, that it has an adequate defence...
There can be no real peace if the developed countries do not pay more attention to the less-favoured peoples. Bolstered by this certainty and aware of their particular responsibilities and obligations, the Nine attach paramount importance to the fight against underdevelopment in the world. They are therefore determined to intensify their efforts in the fields of trade and development aid, and to strengthen international cooperation to this end.
In 1992, the Maastricht Treaty ruled out any cultural dimension, and this reappeared timidly in 2000 with the Charter of Fundamental Rights published on 18 December 2000 ("The Union shall respect cultural, religious and linguistic diversity", Article 22 entitled "Cultural, religious and linguistic diversity").
This little cultural firefly was taken up again by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2010, but without religion:
"The Union shall respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity, and shall ensure that Europe's cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced. (Article 3 of the Lisbon Treaty)
It is inconceivable that a political concept could exist without cultural and therefore linguistic substrates. It is only through languages and cultures that Europe can be aware of itself. It has to be said that, historically, the countries of Europe have, from the outset, directed their forces against each other before extending their confrontations to the whole world. This was a good breeding ground for getting to know each other and, having risked the apocalypse, beginning to aspire to a certain form of political wisdom. This is their new and true cultural background.
The new state of the world is leading to this new awareness.
The current period is witnessing an acceleration of trends that could have been anticipated a long time ago.
We have known for decades that the United States has strategic and economic interests that distance it from Europe. General de Gaulle's France was the first to doubt the reliability of the American shield, and chose, not without hesitation, prevarication and renunciation, the path of sovereignty, while most Europeans preferred to maintain the illusion of a protectorate that is proving less and less protective. Rallying to the Star-Spangled Banner and following the cultural oscillations of the United States is a substitute cultural background.
Strategic decoupling is rooted in physical and economic geography. When the United States wages war - and it is almost always at war somewhere in the world - it always wages it away from home.
And that's not all.
All European countries are secular, in the sense that they respect all religions but make a clear separation between religious practice and public life. This is not the case in the United States, where the President takes an oath on the Bible and a cabinet meeting is opened with a prayer.
Religiosity, which is not religion but permeates everyday life, is a widely shared characteristic. But why is it that our relationship with truth and science is becoming increasingly blurred? This issue is on the rise again with the development of social networks, and no society is immune. However, it is taking a completely unbalanced turn in the United States, where it is affecting the very heart of institutions.
After stigmatising the so-called restrictions on freedom of expression in Europe, launching digital autodafés in laboratories and at scientific publishers, giving instructions on which concepts should be banned and which should be promoted, sending little red guards into bookshops and public and school libraries to sort out which books should be banned and which should be recommended, is a harbinger of a different society. The novlanguage of Orwell's 1984 is not far off. European countries must take a firm stand against these deleterious trends, which are a real threat to the civilisation they represent. Are they on the right track? It's a real question.
All European countries have established a separation between the world of money and political responsibility, a separation that is difficult to enforce, but which does exist and is reflected in legislation, always imperfect, but sufficient to give meaning to the concepts of corruption, conflict of interest and transparency.
There is nothing equivalent to this in the United States, where, according to Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, democracy takes on a singular form, to the point of caricature, where 1 dollar equals 1 vote, where a president manipulates the stock market and speculates on social networks when he is not directly advertising the brand of car whose closest collaborator is himself the boss. The ancient Greeks called this political regime plutocracy.
Our social systems have diverged considerably. They are no longer variants of the same model. Even if some people in Europe imagine selling off our social protection systems, no serious person would dare to model themselves on a country with one of the most expensive and least protective health systems in existence, where infant mortality (6.3) is twice that of the European Union and 30% higher than in Russia or Canada (4.89), and where life expectancy (76.4) is 5 years lower than in the European Union (81.2).
President Trump has decided to make English the only official language of the United States and has eliminated Spanish from the White House website, which has prompted a reaction from the Spanish embassy.
The purpose of official languages, as the tradition has been since the Justinian Code (529-534) and the Villers-Cotterêts Order (1536), is to facilitate relations between the political and administrative authorities and citizens. This is why some countries have several official languages. This is particularly true of the European Union, which has 24 official languages. The United States, a country of immigrants if ever there was one, has not until now had an official language at federal level. By seeking to impose English alone, it tends to exclude American citizens whose mother tongue is the second language spoken in the United States. This is exclusionary legislation. The Linguistics Society of America has expressed its concern and issued a strong statement on the subject, which we have reproduced on the OEP website .1
Is this a bad time? Some people who have not yet broken free from the Atlanticist mould believe so and hope so. Many Americans think and hope so too. Is this a profound and lasting change in the nature of American society and democracy? Many analysts think so.
We are talking here mainly about the United States, because it is with the United States that a global, geostrategic and cultural paradigm shift is taking place. With China, there is no mystery. It is no longer a developing or even an emerging country. The roles have been reversed. In many areas, it has taken the technological and industrial lead. Despite the war in Ukraine, Russia is a second-rate geostrategic rival, and in terms of values it is part of the "reactionary international" that brings together the American, European and Russian extreme right, divided only by their nationalism and historical antagonisms. But alongside the United States, China and Russia, there is the rest of the world, i.e. 5.6 billion people, including 1.4 billion in Africa, our closest neighbours.
This accumulation of facts should precipitate a European awareness that is currently in its infancy and fragile.
In any case, this is a crucial time for us Europeans, in our relationship with the United States and of course with the world as a whole. Together, we must take responsibility for ourselves and realise that in the new state of the world, either we assert ourselves in order to exist in our fundamental cultural unity and diversity, or we will be torn apart and subjugated in a serious and lasting way.
During a debate organised on 26 November 2011 by the newspaper Libération with Umberto Eco on the theme "Can culture give Europe meaning?", the latter came to the central question: "The cultural unity I'm talking about is something impalpable that I don't feel when I'm in Europe....Everything changes at a party, at a reception in New York... at a conference after midnight... you start talking among Europeans and you discover that there are more similarities between my way of thinking and that of a Swede than there are between my way of thinking and that of an American, you are European and then you discover this impalpable unity...", a unity that expresses itself admirably in philosophy, the arts, film and literature...
Only the awareness of a plural cultural unity based on an assumed plurilingualism and linguistic diversity can lead to the reinforcement of this intangible with all its political and geopolitical consequences.
This is a real existential question for Europeans.
1 https://www.observatoireplurilinguisme.eu/les-fondamentaux/politiques-linguistiques/17948-lsa-statement-against-designating-english-as-the-official-language; https://www.observatoireplurilinguisme.eu/les-fondamentaux/politiques-linguistiques/17931-l-anglais-va-devenir-la-langue-officielle-des-%C3%A9tats-unis