The European Union has always been a concept of values, cultural diversity, interculturalism and solidarity, but also political and governing practices that imply dignity, progress and system of values. Precisely towards this concept, recently, in the framework of the enlargement process, Northern Macedonia and Albania, two countries that have already opened the process of negotiations for EU membership, are also opening.
Editorial of KDP
The big dreams placed on the pentagrams of open-minded personalities always create real political and cultural horizons. After centuries of divisions, especially after the collapse of World War II, the idea of a united Europe was emerging as an economic, political, and cultural entity.
Before it was a real political project, the idea of a united Europe had begun in the minds of philosophers and visionaries. Victor Hugo, for example, imagined the “European United States” as a peace-loving project based on humanist ideals. But that dream, as Pascal Fontaine says in “Europe in 12 Lectures,” was shattered by the terrible wars that devastated the continent during the first half of the twentieth century.
However, from these ruins, a new hope was born. The people who had resisted totalitarianism decided to put an end to hatred and rivalry, opening another time that created the conditions for a lasting peace in Europe.
Between 1945 and 1950, a handful of courageous personalities such as Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, Alcide de Gasperi, and Winston Churchill made the decisive effort to enter a new era. And all this was rounded off with Schumann’s statement of May 9, 1950, when the constitution and dimensioning of the European Union really began, an idea previously conceived by Jean Monnet.
Gradually the European Union project was taking shape, precisely on this initial concept which meant cultivating and affirming common values, while over time the EU entity was already being structured in the entire institutional dimension as we already know it.
Of course, the concept of the EU meant the totality of the countries that make up the continent, so the involvement of other countries in this community, which is otherwise known as the enlargement process, was introduced as imperative.
The European Union has always been a concept of values, cultural diversity, solidarity and interculturalism, but also political and governing practices that imply dignity, progress and system of values. Precisely towards this concept, recently, in the framework of the enlargement process, Northern Macedonia and Albania have been opened, as two countries that have already opened the process of negotiations for EU membership.
On Europe Day, this orientation remains an indisputable essence of reflection on the whole European plan of practice that should already be alternated in the institutional functioning in Northern Macedonia. Europe has always been a dream, a process that implies good politics, good governance, civic activism, a functioning democracy and the freedom to built on the concept of human dignity and shared values.
The EU’s birthday is a good opportunity to reflect on these values, a moment of remembrance and responsibility that everyone should have as an effort, a claim to internalize the European vision, to elevate the setting of European standards in all dimensions of functioning. of institutional and social life.
And it is indisputable that the EU, for years, but also currently invests millions of euros for the revival of the Western Balkans and for the integration of this part in its entirety, not only as a geography, but also as a mindset and space of values.
The Western Balkans, as well as Northern Macedonia, are already entering another integration paradigm, which really enables the European dream to become tangible for all the citizens of this region, which has experienced many turbulences throughout history. The paradigm of the Berlin Process and a series of concrete investments by the EU make us realize that we are not alone and that the future of all these countries is in the European space of values and progress.