Enlarge views – Europe is en/large enough

By Audrey Beaulieu

The first July day of 2020 in Vienna sow marking the anniversary of Nuremberg Trials with the conference “From the Victory Day to Corona Disarray: 75 years of Europe’s Collective Security and Human Rights System – Legacy of Antifascism for the Common Pan-European Future”. Organised by the International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies (IFIMES), Modern Diplomacy Media Platform, , European Perspectives Scientific Journal, and Culture for Peace Action Platform, with the support of the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna that hosted the event in its prestigious historical premises, the highly anticipated and successful gathering, was probably one of the very few real events in Europe, past the lockdown.

The conference gathered over twenty high ranking speakers and audience physically in the venue while many others attended online. The day was filled by three panels focusing on the legacy of WWII, Nuremberg Trials, the European Human Rights Charter and their relevance in the 21^st century; on the importance of culture for peace and culture of peace – culture, science, arts, sports – as a way to reinforce a collective identity in Europe; on the importance of accelerating on universalism and pan-European Multilateralism while integrating further the Euro-MED within Europe, or as the Romano Prodi EU Commission coined it back in 2000s – “from Morocco to Russia – everything but the institutions”.

(For the full account of speakers and side events, see: https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/07/05/diplomatic-academy-vienna-marking-the-75th-anniversary/ and the full conference video is available: https://www.facebook.com/DiplomaticAcademyVienna)

The event sought to leverage on the anniversary of Nuremberg to highlight that the future of Europe lies in its pan-continental union based on shared values but adapted to the context of 21^st century. Indeed, if Nuremberg and the early Union were a moment to reaffirm political and human rights after the carnage of WWII, the disarray caused by C-19 is a wake-up call for a new EU to become more aware of and effective on the crisis of socio-economic rights and its closest southern and eastern neighbourhood.

At the moment the EU lacks the necessary leadership that dragged it outside of WWII almost eighty years ago and that nowadays needs to overcome the differences that prevent the continent to achieve a fully integrated, comprehensive socio-economic agenda.

On that matter, Lamberto Zannier, OSCE High Commissioner for National Minorities and, the previous OSCE Secretary-General (2011-2017), delivered highly anticipated address.

In his highly absorbing speech, the well-known European diplomat highlighted the milestones in the history of the European continent’s security system in recent decades and told how, in his opinion, the European Union, its partners and neighbours could overcome confrontation and other negative moments that have become obvious in recent years.

“In the 1980s, the NATO and the Warsaw Pact held negotiations that were considered a good form of dialog between the two enemies. But in the years that followed we have not really moved an inch. We were talking, but we were not communicating… In late 1980s, in the CSCE there was a new starting point, the Charter of Paris for a New Europe, a new vision of a new Europe for stability.

The key point in this debate is how will NATO relate to Russia in the future. In the first half of the 1990s, there were those who were thinking that we need to build a new relationship with Russia as a first step and then we can really develop relations on the basis of that. But, of course, the agendas did not really match. On the NATO side, the Americans were repositioning themselves on their global agenda as the only remaining superpower projecting stability through the promotion of democratic institutions. And they promoted a rather conservative view of what NATO should be.

On the Russian side, there was a big internal debate. Russians still saw NATO as the former enemy, and so they were saying that there was no need for NATO today. But others, especially the leadership, were willing to open a discussion, but the discussion about the future of NATO itself. They were basically saying that they would consider joining NATO, but then NATO would have to change.

It would have to turn into a collective security instrument, into something similar to what the OSCE is today. This failed because there was no way to reconcile the two sides. This failure which led to NATOs progressive expansion was seen by Russia as aggressive, as a development that was a threat to Russia. In response, Russia started to establish its own area of influence.

[…] From the late 1990s, the division between Europe and the Russian community has been expanding. The UN Security Council was divided on the Kosovo issue. We managed to pass a decision, but that took quite an effort. Then we had crisis in and around Ukraine and the Crimea. Every step seemed to increase the distance between the sides and to bring more geopolitics on the table.

[…] Today we face the situation where we have a lot of potential instability and we lost the tools that would allow us to address these problems.

By early of 2000s we started facing global challenges which kept unfolding last 20 years (terrorism, transnational organized crime, climate change, migration crisis, demographic crisis): countries react on them by closing up. We have seen on the migration crisis, EU entered the crisis itself, lack of common policy, lack of solidarity. The pandemic has also led to the real renationalization, closure of boarders, everybody is looking for itself. It’s fully understandable, but global problems need global solutions. It’s very difficult to work on global strategies and sustainable development we very need today, geopolitical divisions make it impossible. The renationalization of the policy leads to progressive disinvestment of countries on multilateral framework. In OSCE for instance we have a shrinking budget all the time, we need to cut back all the time as a result mainly of the lack of interest of countries to invest in the frameworks like this. We need to stick together, to address challenges that affect us all… “

Closing his note, High Commissioner invited all to think, reconsider and recalibrate: “What can we do? Creating coalitions, involving youth because they great interest to make things work, we must involve young people in everything we do. Secondly, we must start talking about the need to invest in the effective multilateralism.”

While the diversity of speakers and panels led to a multifaceted picture, panellists agreed, from a political viewpoint, on the need for more EU integration but also pan-European cooperation, a better balance between state and markets that could put the state again in charge of socio-economic affairs in order to compensate market failures; greater involvement of the Union for the Mediterranean in the implementation of EU policies, and the overcoming of Washington Consensus, among other things.

From a strategic perspective, two important points emerged: Firstly, a more viable EU Foreign Policy needs to resolve tensions that still create mistrust between the West and Russia, with a particular attention to frozen conflicts. Secondly, it is essential that European states reaffirm a long-term, forward-thinking policy agenda that can prepare them for future strategic challenges.

Having all that in mind, the four implementing partners along with many participants have decided to turn this event into a lasting process, tentatively named – Vienna Process: Common Future – One Europe. This initiative was largely welcomed as the right foundational step towards a longer-term projection that seeks to establish a permanent forum of periodic gatherings as a space for reflection on the common future by guarding the fundamentals of our European past and common future.

As the closing statement notes: “past the Brexit the EU Europe becomes smaller and more fragile, while the non-EU Europe grows more detached and disenfran-chised”. A clear intent of the organisers and participants is to reverse that trend.

To this end, the partners have already announced the follow up event in Geneva for early October to honour the 75^th anniversary of the San Francisco Conference. Similar call for a conference comes from Barcelona, Spain which was a birth place of the EU’s Barcelona Process on the strategic Euro-MED dialogue.

Audrey Beaulieu of the University of Ottawa (Globalization and International Development Department), specialised in public and private International law, international development and global politics.