Berlusconi remarks remind us what's at stake

Written by Sarah Ludford MEP and published in Highbury & Islington Express on Fri 11th Jul 2003

The notorious remarks by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are still reverberating around Europe.

You will recall that he responded to a dig about his evasion of justice on charges of corruption by hitting back that the German MEP in question would be good for the film role of a concentration camp commandant.

One British newspaper said that this broke the unwritten 'Basil Fawlty' rule in the EU that 'we don't mention the war'.

Actually, nothing could be farther from the truth.

The experience of Nazism, and the way the poisonous mix of racism & anti-semitism and xenophobia led to war and Holocaust, are never far from our minds in the European Parliament.

We know from our own continent that poverty and humiliation provide a potent environment for the virus of hatred and intolerance to take root and dictatorship to flourish.

It was never true that the EU was only set up as a 'common market'. Of course, the thesis at the root of the enterprise was that people who are employed, comfortable and secure do not look for scapegoats for their misery and envy.

But it was always appreciated that there is a close link between a flourishing economy built on freedom to trade, and political freedom and civil liberties. The two would reinforce each other.

That is why a key introductory phrase to the EU treaty signed by all the governments is: 'Confirming their attachment to the principles of liberty, democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and the rule of law.'

The rule that Berlusconi broke was the one against stereotyping. Just as the MacPherson inquiry into the police handling of Stephen Lawrence's murder rightly warned against racial stereotyping at home, so the EU is built on avoiding the dangers of national, ethnic and religious stereotyping.

What happened in Germany could happen anywhere with the right conditions of alienation and failure to challenge racism. We have seen in the Balkans in the last 15 years how nationalism can lead to 'ethnic cleansing'.

In fact, Germany has built one of the soundest democracies in the world since 1945. We could well take a leaf out of their book about entrenchment of democratic freedoms such as local government rights and fair voting systems.

But it is a myth that the EU is trying to create a great 'Euro-fudge' of identikit Europeans, losing different national and regional identities. Think instead of 'Russian dolls', where one rests inside another.

Having a sense of being European is an addition to the other identities (as a Londoner and a Brit, in my case), not a threat to them.

Silvio Berlusconi has inadvertently done a service by reminding us what is at stake. If we do not keep riding the bicycle of creating a Euro-zone of justice and human rights, we will fall off.

The Americans ridicule us as wimps for caring so much about the rule of law. But Europe knows that if you don't tend the UN, if you don't respect fundamental rights like the right to a fair trial, which a military court at Guantanamo Bay outrageously breaches, then you foster hatred - and terrorism.

The US itself is at risk of creating a stereotype - of rightwing ideological extremism cavalier about freedom. What a tragedy.