The European Union’s unkept promises, the exaggerated personal ambitions of certain of its leading members, and its lack of vision, have eroded people’s trust in the Union and led to “EU-fatigue ”, the president of the German bishops’ conference, Cardinal Reinhard Marx has said.
From its very beginnings after the Second World War, the Church had strongly supported the EU project and all the popes since 1945 had been in favour of European Union, the cardinal, who is also president of the Commission of EU bishops’ conferences (COMECE) observed.
Many populist and conservative circles wanted to see a return to the sovereign national state, but that was a “dead end”, he warned: “That would propel us back into that narrow form of nationalism that was the breeding ground for mistrust and confrontation and led to two disastrous world wars in the first half of the twentieth century.” National states, moreover, could not cope with climate change, mass migration, terrorism or globalisation alone, he observed.
The tendency to boost one’s own nation and declare that it came first was not a development that Christians should encourage, Cardinal Marx emphasised. As a way out of this crisis, it was imperative to step up political education, encourage discussion of European politics and remind people that European unity had brought Europe over 70 years of peace and security.
Loading ...
