Europe is in crisis, the result of many serious causes. It has consumed more than it produced. It has become indolent in competition of international dimensions. It has become complacent in culture, spirit and habit, and thus does not sense any compelling need to renew itself. Those of its ideals which are not obsolete, it has deserted; it has lost touch with its roots. The crisis has also brought on a general confusion of values. Europe is unable to define its own special place in the world.
Europe is in a stalemate, a trench war between the old and the as-yet unknown new.
As it loses its values, its population is having to take in masses of people from other parts of the world with different religions, social norms, working cultures.
The Europe created in the decades following the Second World War cannot continue in the twenty-first century as it was during post-war reconstruction. The program-me of integration did not and could not becoprogram-me a general and full European union.
Distinct national interests remained, and these will continue to call the objective of a European state into doubt. Europe is led by old, long-celebrated, but tired ge-nerations and political and social power structures. Its economy no longer thrives on productive work and the intellectual innovation that serves it. It suffers from a steadily deepening competitive disadvantage relative to new international power centres which have gone through a more thorough renewal, because they have been capable of putting the emerging generations to the fore, or allowing them to grow.
Europe lacks a decisive input from its upcoming generations. Neither does it ask for such input. And the upcoming generations do not seek to put themselves forward.
They are dulled by top-down classifications, the European Union’s bureaucratic ways, its labyrinths and compromises, the general lack of interest, the artificial and malfunctioning welfare models. They do not demand, and do not get, any scope of opportunity to work towards a modern, new European renaissance. They are alre-ady tired in youth. Europe’s current watchword is “better safe than sorry!” Is that true? Keeping safe is certainly better than starting wars or destructive conflicts. But it becomes a pathological condition if it just covers up opportunism, acquiescence and the chronic inability to innovate, distorting the benefits of being “safe from harm”.
The new generation is the resource of the future. This is a banality in itself, a cliché that anyone can say and no-one would deny. But it also sets a huge challenge to the present structures. It is a dangerous energy for movement and creation. Should we be afraid of it, Or is it better to support it, make it our first priority?
The new generation is not just one generation. There is the learning generation of students still at school and college. Then there is the young creative generation who have attained a degree, a job, a profession, and are taking responsibility, are ready to start families, and are the primary resource for the future. Their task boils down to one thing: they have to start building the Future. What these two generations need is a breadth of opportunity to directly express their abilities and interests. This breadth of opportunity must not only interlink these generations, it must build up their mutual strengths, so that Europe’s grandchildren can see through the patroni-sing and deceptive platitudes intoned by the Pharisaic older generations who now run Europe (“here is the Europe of our grandchildren”) and they should become the new creators of Europe.
They should be.
They could be.
They want to be.
The conditions for this are not yet in place. Nor does anyone today wish them to be.
Anyone who did, couldn’t. Anyone who could, wouldn’t dare. Anyone who dared, would fail.
The transition from the obsolete official Europe to the Europe of the new generation will only be possible if these two age groups are able, step by step, to manifest their abilities, the dynamics of their strength, the penetrating power of their goals and the clear expression of their interests, so that they can gain ground and make progress.
This cannot be done by incantations or wishful thinking. Neither can it be produced at a drawing board. It cannot be the high-flown slogan of a political party, which would condemn it to failure.
Europe is not the same as the European Union. Its countries as independent nations add up to more than the sum of their European Union membership. There are also important states, nations and minorities outside the EU. In drafting this manifesto, we address every source of power in Europe at once: EU institutions, sovereign countries, religions, minorities, ethnic groups, and the most powerful supranational economic, scientific, technical and financial powers to help in :
– understanding, and promoting understanding, that the vital importance of the new generation makes it the prime consideration in every decision. Having become embroiled in a serious debt crisis, Europe and its countries have used up the new generations’ future in advance. Instead we should rather allow and help these ge-nerations take up greater responsibility and a bigger part in recreating their future.
– putting in place the initial conditions that will motivate the new generations to take up the cause of Europe’s future in a framework of social continuity. The lear-ning generations – who still do not know their own capabilities or underestimate them – should grow up in this spirit, and the creative young generations should take over the direction of where society is going.
We do not see the need for a revolutionary rechannelling of power. We see the cru-cial role of the new generations as today’s version of the Renaissance, setting an innovative Europe in motion. It is a process in which nobody need be forced out of power, or artificially raised into it. The awakening, the new renaissance, will suc-ceed if it peacefully and constructively draws on the conditions and strengths that define the present, but lays down the foundations for a process which in future will break from the obsolete, worn-out state of bureaucratically complacent Europe as we know it today.
The new Europe has to be built up. Only the new generations can do that. They will be successful only if they are devoted to their objective, Europe, to heart, and their own creative role within it. If they are devoted to their task, they should get ready for it. Today, that is not possible because of the thousand burdens of complacency and resignation. But the new generation, as their creativity is directed towards ta-king responsibility for Europe, and as they gather strength and develop new ideas, will become capable of taking over the leadership of Europe. In that spirit, let there be a New Generation for Europe. We will carry our manifesto as a joint call to the European public.
Budapest, May 2012, Lajos Gubcsi PhD, initiator of the Manifesto
PS: Fundamental change does not necessarily mean revolutionary upheaval. Revo-lutions wallow in human blood. It will be in peace that the New Generation dethro-nes the dictatorship of power based on state-institutional bureaucracy and private wealth. Instead of a throne, they will sit at the designer’s desk.