The selection of the new President of the European Commission, Ursula von\nder Leyen, to attribute the title “Protecting Our European Way of\nLife” to one of the portfolios of the new Commission, created and\ncontinues to create tensions in the EU institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the Commission President herself was asked to justify her choice on\nthis issue, she argued that article 2 of the Lisbon Treaty (known as the Reform\nTreaty which is in force on 01 December 2009 and amends the founding EU\nTreaties) states that the EU relies on the values of respect, freedom, human\ndignity, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights\nalong with the rights of migrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is prohibited\nby intellectual property law or in any way illegal use of this article, with\nheavy civil and criminal penalties for the offender.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But there were not few who disagreed with the choice of the new President\nof the European Commission. Given that Mrs. von der Leyen is politically part\nof the German Christian Democratic Party (CDU), she has essentially adopted the\nexpression “European way of life” which is used in the last years by\nthe Christian Democrats and the European People’s Party. In this way,\nrepresenting the Commission\u2019s new President, the most conservative views in the\nEU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reactions are due that under the expression “European way of\nlife” is hide various aspects of racism and extreme right-populism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Racism in the 19th<\/sup> century and 20th<\/sup> century in Europe\nwas formulated with the theories of the superior race that must be socially and\nculturally above the inferior tribes, justifying the European policy of\ncolonialism, slave trade and discrimination that the then major European powers\nused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In today’s time, both racism and the far-right populist rhetoric has\nmutated and uses as a “vehicle” the different cultures that are not\nnecessary to coexist, indicating that migrants and refugees do not want to be\nadapted to the “European way of life”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Often, when reference is made to European culture and lifestyle, is\nreferred to the ‘Jewish-Christian culture’ so that Islam is excluded from this\ncivilisation. Any immigrants coming from countries other than ‘Western’\nstereotyping country e.g. N. Africa, Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, etc., have no\nplace in the ‘European way of life’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The populism extreme right in Europe has succeeded through its rhetoric on issues of identity and defence of the “European Way of life” to be adopted by the majority of the major European political parties, coupled with the absence of an integrated and common immigration policy in EU are afraid of their great leaking voters to the extreme right parties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The consequence of this is the EU\u2019s hardening both in terms of the acceptance and establishment of migrants in the EU member-countries and in the conditions of granting asylum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, the adaptation of the propaganda of the European extreme right\nabout the ‘European way of life’ by the other parties, manages to highlight as\n“European way of life and culture” the model of “Western and\nwhite Europe” hiding under the carpet its versions such as colonialism,\nantisemitism, fascism, Nazism and communism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But all the civilizations and lifestyles that they represented have been\nhistorically proven to renew themselves and managed in this way to survive over time\nthrough successive waves of migration that carry different cultures by grafting\nthis way the receiver\u2019s cultures. Cultures that were not renewed due to their\nclose-up from the rest of the world were stagning in history, gradually\nerasing. The same could apply to Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is a different matter the creation of a common immigration policy that\nwill be applied by every member-country in Europe and another matter for Europe\nto gradually transform into a fortress (close-up) that will be difficult to\ncomprehend other cultures with aim to continually renew itself in order to\nalways defend its European values such as democracy, the rule of law,\nsolidarity and dialogue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The selection of the new President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to attribute the title “Protecting Our European Way of Life”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[990,991],"tags":[444,1068,587,1069,575,778],"class_list":["post-1228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-feuilleton","tag-commission-eu","tag-european-way-of-life","tag-extreme-right-ideology-in-europe","tag-lisbon-treaty","tag-racism","tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1229,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions\/1229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}