Not long ago, merely 13 years, I took a chance: I left my (at that time) non-EU country, Romania, and decided I would be a European citizen living in Belgium. To me, that meant a wide open space of possibilities, diversity, travel and freedom. No borders. Romania was not yet absolved of all the special conditions imposed by the Union on the newly-entered countries when I took the Belgian nationality and embraced my new identity as a European.
Today, this space that I and many others integrated for the benefits and privileges it so alluringly offered has become a place of confusion. This is not what I imagined. Borders are up again. Borders of fear. The freedom that the EU promised looks at us helpless, feet in shackles, caged within walls of prejudice. Schengen seems a blurry dream that is likely to fade away with a strong morning coffee.
I look around: people with shattered lives waiting for confused countries to distribute them among each other like livestock. They don’t get to choose. Their sudden presence forces change upon us, one that, as it turns out, we are not fully prepared for. They challenge our level of tolerance at home, our own private values and capacities for acceptance of the other. And they intimidate, scare and even repel some of us in this new process, us civilized, highly educated and sophisticated inhabitants of Europe. But right now, all they want is to live.
Leaders blink blankly and get more confused over numbers. Of human lives. They act as if they’re playing in a new version of the 4400 series – a crowd of people was kidnapped by extraterrestrials, lobotomized and dispatched back on Planet Europe. But they have no superpowers and they’re not even using the ones they have as they should. Incapable of dealing with war refugees who also happen to have a different colour and religion, and not recognizing their changing surroundings anymore, they resort to racist, xenophobic speeches and gun-protected borders. The refugees are coming. Fear, as it turns out again and again, is a dangerous , disabling disease that spreads like fire among the simple minded and turns any sign of intelligence into ashes.
Looking at good old Europe, with its traditions and values becoming as questionable as its future, I see panicked citizens and impressive levels of leadership incompetence. Europa is giving up on its children. Ignoring needy migrants as they drown at its gates. Putting loads of responsibilities on Italy’s and Greece’s frail shoulders. Then scapegoating Greece. Who believes in the purpose of the EU anymore?
Panicked about a situation it cannot control, one that was nonetheless strikingly obvious and foreseeable, EU decides to share the refugees among the member states. A remarkable thought, no doubt, with the only disadvantage of not being fully functional. Eastern countries and part of the Central European countries do not exactly have a colonial past nor have they historically been much in contact with other cultures. They emerge from a complicated communist past where any minority was condemned and all good things were white and Christian. A non-neglectable detail when you ask them to take in dark-skinned, Muslim people coming from the “Arab countries” that could have played the evil character in bed-time stories. The politics of open-mindedness has not been duly practised in some of these countries for generations, on account of their borders being…closed to the world until not very long ago. It would be naive to expect them to welcome the refugees with arms wide open. This said, this is not an excuse for not putting humans first.
Poor governance in case of crisis is fertile soil for outbursts of nationalism. Multiculturalism is being questioned and presented as threatening. Although no one has come out in the streets to make an official statement, it has become clear lately that the EU project is slightly failing. At many levels. And unforgivably at human level. While common people hurry to provide assistance in support of the refugees all over Europe, politicians come up with the most derisory remarks.
Hungarian PM Viktor Orban suggests that multiculturalism is a threat to the European values. There is nothing more detrimental to our liberties in Europe today than allowing people such as himself to become public influencers. It is bad enough that they go about unpunished. But their words may have a heavy impact on mentalities for years to come and those will be hard to change.
If multiculturalism starts being seen as a danger to Europe, I think many of us should start packing and find another planet to mess up. Because this little community of 28 is by nature multicultural: Romanians, Belgians, Germans – we are NOT the same. But yes, we are white and mainly Christian.
Meanwhile, borders rise up again. Mental borders. Mentalities are closing in. I stand an astounded European citizen who wants Europe and the EU to shake its people off their prejudice and start acting on human principles. Refugees are not a threat, it is the ground-gaining narrow-mindedness and anti-migrant propaganda that threaten our freedom in Europe today. Century-old universities that produced tons of top-of-the-class thinkers and we get to listen to derogatory speeches that install fear of other people? Decisions whether to host them or not on account of their religion? Europe has clearly forgotten where it comes from and how it has achieved so much. Now it solves migration crisis by building walls. This makes no sense.
Tell your children that multiculturalism is beautiful. That without it, there is no Europe. I still want to believe that Europe can be the place where multiculturalism not only happens, but where it thrives.
In the meantime, winter is coming.
Explorer of the Everyday 