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ELEMENTS EUROPA 143
4 EUROPA’S APORIAS
What influence can this have over people if they do not
learn foreign languages? Probably the same as getting
away from any society would over a single man.
Georg Christoph LICHTENBERG, excerpt from the book
presented and translated by Jean-François Billeter, Lichtenberg, Paris,
Allia, 2016, p. 56. The author refers to the German edition elaborated
by Wolfgang Promies, Schriften und Briefe, vol. 1, Munich, Hanser, 1968.
Apart from one letter, the word aporia is found in the word Europa. The
anagram featured in the name chosen by the Council of Europe names
the logical dead-end of the delicate solution to the European problem -
at least it does give a reverse mirror image of it. What problem? A double
one: Europe’s political unity is only anticipated in the construction of its
institutions, its whole achievement subjected to successive resolutions
and treaties incarnating the updating of its community subsidiarity and
solidarity principles step by step, if not that of shared sovereignty. This
slow construction adopted the double rule of unanimity in decisions and
responsibility to citizens, directly (referendum) or indirectly (ratification
by national Parliaments). A bit like the demand for a democratic ideal,
political Europe has been conceived and imagined based on the diversity
of its languages and cultures, and that is the second aspect of the
problem. Each one of its official languages is equally accepted relating to
the twenty-eight Member States (including the United Kingdom before
Brexit). There is no original version of the texts the European Institutions
produce and no single reference: multilingual exchanges and universal
translation are the rule. The solution to diversity problems is Europe
and nothing else! Year after year (and crisis after crisis, we should like to
think), Europe has been trying to take on the utopian dimension of its
political project, the cosmopolitan condition of its vision for peace and
public life on the continent.
