change language
tu es dans: home - l'oecum�...dialogue - rencontr...tionales - antwerp ...e future newslettercontactslink

Soutenez la Communauté

  

Les arrivées des premiers couloirs humanitaires 2018 en Italie. La nouvelle phase du projet, devenu un modèle d'accueil et d'intégration pour l'Europe

"PAIX SUR TOUTES LES TERRES" : 1er janvier, une marche pour un monde qui sache accueillir et intégrer

Le premier jour de l'année nouvelle, manifestations sur tous les continents pour soutenir le message du pape François

De l'Indonésie au Salvador, de l'Allemagne au Mozambique, voici les nouvelles galeries d'images des repas de Noël de Sant'Egidio dans le monde

Des photos continuent d'affluer de tous les continents, regardez-les sur notre carte interactive!

Galerie de photos et vidéos du repas de Noël à Santa Maria in Trastevere

Visite virtuelle de la crèche de Sant'Egidio : Jésus accueilli par les pauvres, les malades, les sans logis et les hommes de toutes confessions

Sant'Egidio et la Muhammadiyah signent à Djakarta un nouvel accord pour la paix et le dialogue interreligieux

une délégation de la Communauté menée par Marco Impagliazzo se trouve en Indonésie

Sant'Egidio au conseil de sécurité de l'ONU pour un point sur la République centrafricaine

Mauro Garofalo : "Le succès de ce premier désarmement garantit la crédibilité de l'ensemble du processus en actes"

Donner à manger aux personnes âgées au Mozambique : distribuitions d'aides alimentaires aux plus pauvres dans la ville de Beira

Aidons les réfugiés rohingyas au Bangladesh

La Communauté de Sant’Egidio lance une collecte de fonds pour envoyer des aides dans les camps de réfugiés au Bangladesh, en collaboration avec l’Eglise locale

Tous les textes de la rencontre #Pathsofpeace

L'assemblée d'inauguration de la rencontre internationale Chemins de Paix

Chemins de 2017 : tout sur la rencontre internationale des religions du monde pour la paix

Le programme, les intervenants et les événements en direct streaming

Global friendship, #MoreYouthMorePeace : le message et l’engagement des Jeunes pour la paix à Barcelone

rendez-vous l’année prochaine à Rome !

 
version imprimable
7 Septembre 2014 17:00 | Stadsschouwburg

Contribution



Herman Van Rompuy


President of the European Council
Ladies, Gentlemen, dear friends,
 
Belonging to the European Union means first and foremost adhering to fundamental values. Values like human rights, peace, justice, freedom, tolerance, responsibility, solidarity and friendship. 
Yes, I did say "friendship" – and I realize that some of you may be surprised to hear such a word  used in the context of politics.  
But let us remember that the first Franco-German post-war treaty was called  "Treaty of Friendship".
Love, friendship, tolerance, forgiveness and peace. 
And it seems to me that the word "peace" – the value of "peace" – is what best captures the very essence of the European project on which we have been toiling since the end of World War II.
After all, establishing, maintaining and developing peace is an ongoing battle.
A battle which we must fight on a daily basis.
President Mitterrand's saying is still true: "Le nationalisme c'est la guerre". He meant radical nationalism : when the nation's glory is put above all else. We have to keep this in mind today, looking at the aggression and the death toll in Ukraine.
As the Holy Father, Pope Francis, said in June this year, welcoming Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas at the Vatican, and I quote :
"Peacemaking calls for courage, much more so than warfare. It calls for the courage to say yes to encounter and no to conflict; yes to dialogue and no to violence; yes to negotiations and no to hostilities; yes to respect for agreements and no to acts of provocation; yes to sincerity and no to duplicity. All of this takes courage, it takes strength and tenacity" (end of quotation).
It is even more true now than before this tragic summer, with atrocities like the downing of a passenger plane or barbarianism in Iraq and Syria.
 
Courage, strength, tenacity: they are the European Union's very raison d'être. 
For if there is one value which has enabled the European Union to endure, it is that of peace. 
After more than 1500 years of fratricidal wars, an almost endless list of successively broken peace treaties and the destruction of Europe, the death of ten of millions of men and women in two world wars, it was through forgiveness, reconciliation and cooperation among and between the peoples of Europe that Europe's rebirth was made possible.
 
Robert Schuman  symbolically led us into this European renaissance on 9 May 1950.
Speaking several months before this declaration, Robert Schuman stated quite clearly that  "trust between peoples is neither improvised nor imposed [...]. We can only attain it [he said] through cooperation within a broader framework in which a number of us show our goodwill. That framework is Europe."  Because Europe is in fact a generous concept. It is the practical implementation of forgiveness and reconciliation.
 
This peace cannot be merely a word.
This peace can only be established on the basis of trust ("confiance" in French, from "se fier à" meaning "to have faith in"), which derives, in Europe as elsewhere, from reconciliation. 
Reconciliation, which draws on forgiveness, a theological concept which the Founding Fathers of the European project brought to the political sphere. And we have achieved reconciliation after wars of an unprecedented cruelty. Forgiving came like a conversion after a Calvary. Reconciliation is therefore at the root of European "togetherness", to use that excellent English word. 
It implies also that we have made peace with ourselves, for there is no external peace without achieving internal peace. Reconciliation that does not result from forgetting, because nothing lasting is ever constructed on denial of the past. 
To be reconciled is to accept the past. Not in order to understand it or to excuse it, but to go beyond it. That is the only way to establish a lasting peace. Reconciliation is underway in the Western Balkans. The normalisation of relations between Serbia and Kosovo was a precondition for Serbia candidacy for EU-membership. Two years ago, remember, we were together in Sarajevo, also for a Sant' Egidio gathering.
If it is to be lasting, peace must also be solidly based. For you cannot "force" peace, and too many failures are caused by a lack of understanding of the original premises. We cannot have permanent peace if we do not live in peace – if we do not eliminate the violence in ourselves.
For this reason, we must establish permanent bonds of peace beginning with our own free will, without deceiving ourselves or others, by showing acts of respect every day, acts of justice and love towards others and towards ourselves. Acts of respect which are just as much acts of peace.
We have to bring people together. People who have met each other, got to know each other, start to respect each other. 
Levinas was right when he spoke about "le visage de l'autre" and the ethical appeal coming from this encounter. The millions of young people that come together through Erasmus: they will never become euro-sceptics.
To develop, peace must be able to count on a profound sense of common destiny and on shared values. And that is where the Union must play its part in full.
For if peace is in itself a value, a value of which the ultimate prolongation is love, our Union is not in itself a value (in the sense of an end to be attained).  It is only a means, and a very effective one, serving the values of which it is the guarantee and which at the same time go beyond it.
Still today, the Union never ceases to grow. It does so without spilling a single drop of blood. We started with six and now we are with twenty-eight and the story is not over. There is a waiting list. Remember the European flags on Maidan in the winter of this year. 
An evidence of this "new Europe" is the election of the Polish Premier as President of the European Council, twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin wall.
And the "new members" attribute to the value of peace in the Union an importance which goes beyond that attributed to it by the "old members", who have sadly somewhat forgotten the lessons of the past…
For the "new members" the Cold War only ended in 1989, and for the people of the Western Balkans civil war and genocide are still, sadly,  living memories. 
But 'Opus justitiae pax'. Our societies are now faced with rising poverty, unemployment and growing inequalities. This sentiment paves the way to populism, extremism and anti-European feelings. Europe is considered by many as not sufficiently 'caring and protecting' for all the Europeans. 
We need to get the balance right. It is essential for the Union to be also on the protecting side; it is urgent for the Union not to be seen as only benefiting businesses, but also employees; not only the "movers" but also the "stayers". Justice is at the heart of our political and societal debates. For injustice is a threat to a harmonious society. It creates antagonism, enemy-thinking, racism. Which is why we so very much need more economic growth and a fairer distribution of income. I know from experience that there are no miracle solutions, but I also know how big the challenge is and what the consequences are if we fail. This is all the more true on a global scale. Poverty and extreme poverty have gone down in China, India, South America but is still too high. Religious fanaticism is a result, not only but also, of poverty, of lack of hope. Religious conflicts are often only seemingly religious. By the way, the EU is externally a caring Union, a real 'soft' power.
Europe is not perfect but we are the provider of half of the development aid in the world, the biggest donor of humanitarian aid.
 
The European Union is the driving idea of the possibility and necessity of solidarity between persons and between peoples, based on the responsibility of each  towards themselves and towards what Christians call their "neighbour", and that others, Christians sometimes too, call their "brother" or simply the travelling stranger…
Responsibility and solidarity go hand in hand with rights and duties towards others. I would like this to be remembered by all those who advocate a withdrawal, those whose heightened selfishness test the  Europe to the limit.
This selfishness is expressed not only in declining to help others in difficult times but also in refusing to accept our own responsibilities towards others.
Living in peace means living with others in solidarity and with responsibility. We felt, during the crisis in the eurozone this interdependence. We are all in the same boat if we want to survive.
To conclude, let us hope that in future, in the Union, we may continue to say, to paraphrase Aristide Briand, French Minister in the twenties and Nobel-Price winner:
"I say that Europe is not diminished, nor is it compromised in its strength when, free of all imperialist designs and serving only ideas of progress and humanity, it stands up and declares directly to the world's face: I declare peace on you."
 
Thank you.

 

PROGRAMMA
PDF

LIVE STREAMING



NOUVELLES CONNEXES
30 Janvier 2018
BANGUI, RÉPUBLIQUE CENTRAFRICAINE

Chantal, Elodie et les autres : des enfants en soins avec le programme DREAM à Bangui, capitale de la Centrafrique

IT | ES | DE | FR | CA | NL
25 Janvier 2018
ROME, ITALIE

Centrafrique. Le président Touadéra en visite à Sant’Egidio : « Merci pour le soutien au processus de paix : la nouvelle phase de désarmement commence maintenant »

IT | ES | DE | FR | PT | CA | ID
1 Janvier 2012

Marche pour la paix sur toutes les terres


Rome, un long cortège jusqu'à la Place Saint-Pierre. Les salutations du pape Benoît
IT | DE | FR | NL | RU
24 Octobre 2011

L'Esprit d'Assise : 25 années de prière pour la paix

IT | EN | ES | DE | FR | PT | CA | NL | RU
21 Mars 2011

Jos (Nigeria) : conférence sur la paix, le service aux pauvres et le dialogue interreligieux

IT | EN | ES | DE | FR | PT | CA | NL
2 Janvier 2011

A Rome, le pape salue les participants à la marche "Paix sur toutes les terres" organisée par la Communauté de Sant'Egidio

IT | ES | DE | FR | PT | CA | NL | CS
toutes les actualités liées

ACTUALITÉS À L'AFFICHE
2 Février 2018

D'Argentine au sanctuaire des martyrs de Saint-Barthélemy, les reliques des religieux tués en 1976


La prière a été présidée par Mgr Oscar Vicente Ojea, président de la Conférence épiscopale argentine
IT | ES | FR
1 Février 2018 | IRAK

Irak : inquiétude de Sant'Egidio devant le recours à la peine de mort

IT | ES | DE | FR
30 Janvier 2018 | PARIS, FRANCE

Bienvenue ! L'arrivée à Paris de 40 réfugiés syriens par les couloirs humanitaires ouverts en France

IT | ES | DE | FR | CA | ID

ASSOCIATED PRESS
26 Février 2018
Roma sette
Congo e Sud Sudan, Gnavi: «La liberazione ha il nome di Gesù»
23 Février 2018
Domradio.de
"Wir können Frieden organisieren wie andere den Krieg"
22 Février 2018
Famiglia Cristiana
La preghiera sia un urlo contro le guerre
21 Février 2018
Vatican Insider
Sant’Egidio si unisce alla Giornata di digiuno per Congo e Sud Sudan indetta dal Papa
21 Février 2018
SIR
Giornata preghiera e digiuno: Comunità di Sant’Egidio, adesione all’invito del Papa. Veglia nella basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere a Roma e in molte città italiane
toutes les revues de presse associées