EUROPE’S RESPONSIBILITY FOR ENTERING INTO ITS OWN FUTURE IS AT THE SAME TIME EUROPE’S RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD
Speech by the President of the Republic of Slovenia Milan Kucan in the Parliament of the Republic of Latvia

Riga (Latvia), 2 March 2000


The future is a challenge. A challenge for Slovenia and Latvia, just as it is for the whole of Europe. It is an opportunity. It is also a responsibility. It may remain only a yearning and hope. Or it can become a reality. The only way to achieve it is through the joint effort of all the countries of Europe, large and small.

Eurocentrism is now over. That was an era when for better or worse Europe put its mark on world civilisation. New developmental centres of human civilisation are emerging. Europe has a future, if with its own identity it can find a path of cooperation with those centres.

European association is not simply and primarily a technical process of bringing countries together. Indeed it is a process of making Europe ready to influence the world order, so that diversity of cultures and civilisations will not mark out the battle lines of new disputes and conflicts, but rather a need for dialogue between them. So that Europe will take equal responsibility for such a world.

In itself, Europe must become a society of tolerance, fostering internal cooperation, respect and coexistence of European nations, allowing European borders to be finally fixed, and ensuring a free position for ethnic minorities. Recognition of diversity can benefit all countries. Europe’s responsibility for entering into its own future is at the same time Europe’s responsibility for the future of the world.

Within the common European past, individual nations have had their own different past. This also applies to Slovenia and Latvia. Now we all desire our own different kind of future, but within a common European future. We have a common European experience, and our own individual experiences, and an awareness that the present moment in our history is a great opportunity.

People make history. It is not governed by historical laws that are independent of the will of the people. Human individuals have free will. They may exercise this wherever there is the rule of human rights, and where there is political democracy founded on these rights. In principle this is the case almost throughout Europe. With their experience and hopes, and with their free will, people are putting persuasive pressure on the leaders of democratic countries to finally take that step into a common European future.

If we observe and consider the past, we may learn what kind of future it is that we must step into. So when we face the future we are first facing the past. Taking our leave of the past is a confirmation of maturity for the future.

I. The Europe Of Today And Tomorrow

Ten years ago, as the Brandenburg Gate was opened, Europe was swept by a great hope that the past could not be repeated. The project of a United Europe seemed realistic.

The fundamental expectations and hopes of European nations, especially those that were for more than half a century not just politically, but also culturally removed against their will to the political east of Europe, are today to a large extent still unfulfilled. The decades lived by the nations and countries of pre-Berlin Europe have left deep traces in the spiritual and political structures of the nations on both sides of that physically collapsed wall. In real life, as well as in our minds, the old European economic and political divisions remain. There are even new ones emerging. There are alarming signs for the European future that life in Europe is becoming increasingly adjusted to these divisions.

The plans for a European homeland as a homeland of all homelands, and especially for enlarging the European Union, are being put back, and may be postponed for some indefinite time. This is the undesired but all too possible reality for the Baltic states and the countries of Central, Southeast and Eastern Europe, which are in the “waiting room” for the European Union or even waiting outside it, with or even without association agreements and negotiating positions. Holding back enlargement even after individual candidate countries have fulfilled the conditions could be understood as an apprehension about allowing foreigners to enter what has until now been a securely fenced house. An indefinite postponement of enlargement would have negative effects. Let us hope that the year given by the EU for when it will be ready to accept new members will hold fast.

Right at the end of the last century a grotesque and provocative boundary was drawn – partly to protect the Schengen security border – between the politically stable and unstable parts of the European continent in the east and southeast. In these areas the horrors of war have barely ended, yet terrorism, organised crime and corruption are already rampant.

Stable Slovenia is situated on boundary of the unstable southeast, and feels directly all the damaging security, spiritual, civilisational, economic and social consequences of this gulf. We also feel the consequences of the facile reasoning that divides Europe into western and eastern Christian spheres, and declares the Christian countries defenders against Islamic fundamentalism. Slovenia also experiences the insecurity that is a living reality for a part of the people of Europe because of new signs of nationalist and religious fundamentalism, anti-Semitism and ideological exclusivism. The rise of right-wing political extremism and populism is a cause for concern.

The stable and democratic part of Europe has still not been able to establish productive communication and relations with Russia, which is facing the political, economic, social, spiritual and even emotional consequences of the collapse of the Soviet state. It has not been able to define its relations towards this one-time superpower, with which it shared responsibility for peace in the former ideologically polarised world. And the situation in Chechnya is a new embarrassment for Europe and the world.

All of this tells us that a wide variety of future pictures of Europe are possible. Including pictures that would bring back the past. Here the fate of small countries, including Slovenia, is less certain than the fate of large countries. This almost certainly applies to Latvia, too.

II. Slovenia Between Stable And Unstable Areas

Slovenia is a small country. Beyond it, the unstable part of Europe begins, although the recent political changes in Croatia afford us great hope that the world of stability will also spread to our neighbour. History has not been especially favourable towards the Slovenes. We managed to protect our national identity in extremely inclement historical circumstances, and before 1991 we had no support from our own state.

At the end of the eighties in the former Yugoslavia, Slovenia was faced with a choice: increasingly intolerable totalitarianism, Serbian hegemony over the other nations and a distancing from the market economy, or a Slovene national identity, human rights, democracy, a market economy and welfare state, and the path to integration of European nations and states. The choice in this fundamental conflict, which consumed the then Yugoslavia, was not hard. In December 1990 the Slovenes opted in a plebiscite for independence, democracy and a European orientation.

The transition from socialist self-management to a market economy and a democratic, rationally ordered welfare state, was less painful for Slovenia than for the countries of the former Eastern Bloc. Yet it was no less complicated than elsewhere. As an independent country Slovenia made a fairly rapid transition to parliamentary democracy, a market economy with stable macroeconomic conditions for companies to operate in, and a society with a relatively high degree of social solidity.

Slovenia enjoys a GDP per capita of 14,000 dollars in purchasing power parity. It attains 71 per cent of the European Union average, and has a GDP per capita that is more than 70 per cent higher than the average of the ten candidates for accession to the European Union. In terms of the index of human development UN analyses rank Slovenia 28th out of 170 countries.

Slovenia’s economy is growing at a rate of 4 per cent each year. The proportion of public spending on education stands at almost 6 per cent, and spending on research and development represents 1.6 per cent of GDP. Slovenia has a considerable number of international – and now even its first global – companies. It is seeking new strategic partnerships.

Today Slovenia is in negotiations with the European Union. Latvia, too, has recently begun negotiations. Slovenia has set out negotiating positions for all areas. It is endeavouring to implement European standards in their entirety and in all areas of public life. A decade ago it looked on the institutions of united Europe with euphoria, and today with a proper degree of criticism. Yet the majority of Slovenes are becoming convinced that we may guarantee both our national identity and a secure life, democracy and prosperity if we are members of the European Union and NATO. A united Europe is the safest common home for the Slovenes.

We know that Slovenia cannot be an industrial power by world standards. It cannot be important in the world of quantitative measures. We seek our future in knowledge, which is confirmed in the quality of products and services. For this reason it has and is developing good, modern schools. Computer literacy is very high, and general education is also above average by European standards. This is a solid basis for the development of high technology companies, including those in the fields of information science and process technology.

III. The Balkan Syndrome

Slovenia is living in conditions in which the nearby Balkan instability is ‘breathing down its neck’. That region is governed by a special climate with special political relations, states of mind, inter-ethnic and human relations, indicating a ‘sick’ spiritual and political pathological condition in the heart of Southeast Europe.

The countries in this region are the result of European history. Their elites maintain the old patterns of thinking, founded on aggressive nationalism and opposed to the universal rule of human rights, which are above national and state sovereignty.

The reasons for this extreme supremacy of the nation, and the nation state, can also be found in the political maps drawn time and again in the Balkans by the Great Powers of Europe, through the dictates of the victor, following countless conflicts, and particularly after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. These maps seriously distorted the boundaries between ethnic and state territory. This is the origin of the myths, including the Serbian myth of Kosovo, which aggressive nationalist political elites summoned to life in order to fire up the hordes of soldiers, believers and rebels in bloody rampages on other nations.

At the foundation of all the Balkan conflicts lies the historically and politically unresolved national question of certain Balkan peoples. They are challenged by the possible ways of resolving this question, and particularly by the concept of the nation state, built on the principle of Blut und Boden, which has the mission of protecting and expanding the national living space (Lebensraum). This concept serves as an ideological justification for ethnic cleansing, genocide and the forcible expulsion of members of other nations living in the ethnically mixed areas that can be found everywhere in the Balkans. And these concepts have been used by political leaders elsewhere in Europe. Talk of the naturally genocidal propensity of the Balkan peoples is absurd, and serves merely as a handy excuse for the international community not to follow through on intervention and commitment, something which has happened by no means infrequently.

For more than ten years Europe’s political leadership stared at its own, malignant Balkan tumour and thought that it could be cured by a political aspirin. But it grew too big and only direct surgery could remove the tumour. The possible consequences of a metastatic condition remain a potent question. For this reason, too, it is vitally important that the members of the European Union and NATO maintain their current unity over the use of force to prevent mass aggression against people. Those responsible for this aggression are unscrupulous players of political poker, yet they have names and surnames. They are also known to the international war crimes tribunal. Last year’s NATO intervention in Milo¹eviæ’s Yugoslavia showed that the conflict in the Balkans has finally been recognised as a European and world problem. The intervention was justified by the position that human dignity and basic human rights represent a value which the modern world places above the sovereignty of a state. This value may therefore, and indeed should, be protected from systematic state aggression, even if this means international intervention. This could signify a completely new chapter in international relations, and a new chapter in international law. It will be put to the test if fundamental human rights are violated through mass aggression by big and powerful countries. If at that time, and in the future, the United Nations is capable of intervening, then perhaps the price of the trial that humankind had to pay for this in the Balkans will be possible to accept.

Until recently Slovenia pointed in vain to the true nature of the Balkan conflicts, and to the real causes of Europe’s Balkan Syndrome. Let us hope that now it will be different, and that the implementation of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe will take this into account.

Yet mere hope is not enough. Europe is making the choice for very difficult changes. No one can remain unaffected by them. No one can expect that they will be made only by others, and that it is possible just to gain from them. Perseverance and patience will be needed for everyone to gain. But it is worth persevering. The recent democratic changes in Croatia serve as eloquent proof of this. And we know this from our memory of the tragic picture of Europe’s past. It would be irresponsible to ourselves and to the future generations of Europeans, if the opportunity so favourably offered now by history were not to be used, out of some selfishness or fear of difficulties. This would be a common defeat for us all. That Europe does not want this is demonstrated by the response to the views of the Freedom Party in Austria since it has become a government party. Proof indeed that anything which threatens common values and thus other countries and our common future, is no longer merely an internal matter for the country in which it happens, whatever country that may be. Respecting shared values and taking responsibility for them are the basis of common security, defence, foreign and internal policies. I believe that Europe will be consistent with this kind of response.

Slovenia wishes to collaborate in this. It wishes to share a European future with all other peoples, nations and countries of good will. It is ready to do whatever it can for this encounter with the future, since within this it sees the guarantee of its own future. I believe that you feel the same way in Latvia.

Please allow me at the end of this presentation of my views on the future of Slovenia in a different Europe to draw a brief parallel between the Baltic region, Central Europe and Southeast Europe. The historical destinies of the nations and countries of these geographically diverse European regions have certain features in common. They are all home to small nations with a rich cultural heritage and tradition of civilisation, whose political destiny has, particularly in the twentieth century, been shaped by the European superpowers. This began immediately after the First World War, when the peace treaties of the superpowers fixed the borders of the new countries in such a way that for the most part they failed to coincide with ethnic borders. The result of this was that greater or smaller sections of nations remained outside the borders of the nation state. At the same time the position of these people was never properly regulated - something which has been a constant source of conflicts, particularly in Southeast Europe . Some nations, among them Slovenia, did not get their own state at all. Latvia was then more fortunate. The Second World War once again cut deeply into the fabric of the nations of all three regions, in a very distinct way. The Baltic states were gripped by the Stalinist occupation. Central Europe and its southeast were overrun and occupied by the armies of the Nazis and the Fascists and suffered the horrors of concentration camps, the shooting of hostages and even the physical destruction of nations. The peace treaties following World War Two, with the division of spheres of interest and the Iron Curtain, again pushed the nations of all three regions into the field of political non-democracy and authoritarian regimes. This political experience, which all of us have shared, and which I have sketched very briefly here, could serve to build closer links between us and encourage us in our efforts towards a real future for a united Europe, in which one of the key features of the quality of life would be freedom and a full identity for the smaller European nations.

I am most grateful for the opportunity you have given me to speak here in your distinguished parliament.

Thank you for being prepared to hear my views and for listening to me.