On Saturday afternoon the philosopher Fernando Savater starred in two of the most anticipated events of the Hay Festival Segovia. In his most pro-European side, the Spaniard first spoke with MEP Pagazaurtundúa and journalist Guto Harri, and later with the fellow philosopher Joseph Cohen.
Pagazaurtundúa and Savater, both fervent Europeanists, demanded the mobilization for the healing of Europe, and analyzed the current situation of the European Union. Recalling its foundational ideals, as a guide for your healing.
Pagazaurtundúa admitted that, although the problems faced in the current European crisis - such as immigration, populism or systematic disinformation - are new problems, he project "has always had technical problems". And why do these problems arise? “They are born from the very nature of the EU: it is a supranational organization, but not a federal one. This means that tensions are created or a huge unnecessary bureaucracy arises,” she said, hinting at her later defense of an eventual federal Europe.
Savater also went back to the foundational beginnings, of purely economic objectives, qualifying the EU as a "selfish enterprise, where its members looked out for their own benefit". He went further: "The following political reinforcement was aimed at preventing fascism from returning and communism spreading," reiterating that original idealistic quest, which has largely been fulfilled.
The talk with Joseph Cohen had a suggestive descriptive title: We Europeans! Which meant it was not a surprise that Savater began by defining what it means to be European. "When you say you are Spanish or Italian, it means that your citizenship, your rights and freedoms, are linked to a specific place. Europe ... We have not yet turned Europe into our citizenship." And those limits, indeed the difficulty of establishing those limits, generate distrust: "We see Europe as something that deprives us of things, instead of giving them to us. Citizens think that Europe steals part of their sovereignty, which imposes conditions. It implies, that they will be ruled by foreigners, and admitting that is difficult, especially when there are difficulties. "
Savater also addressed one of the most current issues: migratory movements towards Europe and the (lack of) hospitality in the old continent. "The law of hospitality is a basic law. From the Odyssey, when Ulysses considers the cyclops barbaric for devouring people who have access to his island instead of helping them. In Europe we must look for the formula, but seriously considering the contradictions. People who come from other continents to Europe are looking for a series of advantages, rights and freedoms that we have. All these rights have a limit in space and time. An excessive wave of request of those rights might create the impossibility to manage it. That creates a contradiction: we want to be hospitable with people who want to integrate into Europe, but if we don't manage it well, we can cause our space of rights to collapse. "