European Identity - Individual, Group and Society - HumanitarianNet

EUROPE: MEANING AND MOTIVE 59majority groups. Globalization transcends national borders and rendersStates unable to face up to such challenges unaided. We needmultilateral cooperation, and Union is the only political device availableto Europeans as a way of influencing the course of events. For thisreason, we must fortify the institutions of a political Union forfreedom.Europe’s place in a worldwide Confederation for solidarity and peaceIt seems to be a generalization of our time that we are changingradically, that we are leaving one phase in the history of Mankind andstarting out on a brand new, unknown era. Well, in the current climateit seems that, regarding the future, we are putting our European wayof life at risk and the outcome will not depend on our actions here butinstead will be based on how we operate outside our own borders.This is nothing more than a consequence of the way in which wegovern. Not only are our way of life, the manner in which we governand our dealings with the outside world linked, they are alsoreciprocally inter-dependent. We cannot expect to continue combiningsolidarity and autonomy, cooperation and competition for much longeron a national level: the constraints imposed by globalization on the onehand, and preserving our peculiarly European mixture of democracy,social market economics, cultural diversity and awareness of thefundamental nature of the environment for our own existence on theother hand, require action to be taken on a global level.This in itself would seem challenging enough. The problem is that,when globalization turns out to be a mere front for attacks on freedom,devastation of the planet and American colonization, the requiredresponse takes on epic proportions. Human rights, democracy, peaceand economic prosperity are all still threatened by the negative facetsof globalization: growing inequalities between the rich and the poor,between countries, and even within the same country; the spread ofdisease and hunger; destruction of the environment; drug trafficking,money laundering, terrorism and arms proliferation.We are not well equipped to combat such threats. Globalization ofmarkets has overtaken the progress being made by internationalinstitutions, and has outstripped the mechanisms required to containeconomic forces so as to bring them into line with our social values.Our global governing bodies are not balanced: economic government—the Group of Seven (G7), World Bank (WB), International MonetaryFund (IMF) and World Trade Organization (WTO)— is more advanced