Toward a Diverse and United Europe

Daniel Barenboim

Almost 75 years after the end of World War II, we face grave threats to our joint European identity, and dangerous nationalist and populist movements are on the rise all over Europe and the world. Overcoming these threats and reinforcing once more the idea of a shared, open and peaceful Europe is perhaps our greatest challenge ever and we must meet this challenge with all the tools we can muster. A key tool is the return to a fact-based culture. The current zeitgeist allows too much room for false narratives. Whoever screams the loudest gets through, whether what he says is true or not. We must work against this, in politics as well as in culture.

The rise of nationalism is in large part a result of many people’s sometimes justified discontent with globalization. Globalization has a homogenizing effect on culture that threatens to annihilate one of our greatest strengths, our wonderful cultural diversity. But nationalism is not the answer to this threat. Nationalism is, in fact, the opposite of true patriotism, as patriotism allows for the inclusion of others, whereas nationalism explicitly excludes and subordinates them. If you are secure of your own values and culture, you can comfortably engage with others and appreciate their culture, too. This is what universalism is all about, and this is what we need to work towards together.

The focus in Europe has too long been on only an economic union—the idea of a shared European cultural space has been largely given up on. This is not what François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl had in mind when they set their European agenda holding hands at the graves of French and German soldiers, an agenda which expected the French and the Germans to engage with and get to know each other through their cultures, through Beethoven and Thomas Mann, through Ravel and Baudelaire.

As a musician, I have spent my life getting to know other cultures and their inhabitants through art and music. This is, of

course, an enormous privilege, but it is also something we need to encourage every single European citizen to try. One of the positive aspects of globalization is that it is now completely normal to live in Berlin as an Israeli-Argentinian and to eat Italian food in Japan on Monday, Japanese food in Munich on Tuesday, and German food in London on Wednesday. We truly have come a long way. It is this diversity that lets us appreciate vibrant and unique cultures and its people who can debate and positively influence each other.

A joint, open, peaceful, culturally diverse and yet united Europe is more than just a beautiful idea—it is the only way forward. Those who have lived through the horrors of two world wars know this all too well. We cannot close our borders, erect walls, and shut out the other, because we will fail as humans if we do. It is therefore not enough to mourn Brexit or the rise of nationalist governments in several European countries. We must come back to the ideal of a shared cultural union, in which our individual and shared histories are equally valued and we work together towards a shared European future.