Speech by the President of the Republic of Slovenia Dr Danilo Türk at the opening ceremony of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue

Ljubljana, 8.1.2008  |  speech

Dear Mrs Wallström, Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy,
Dear Mr Dr Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the European Parliament
Dear members of the European Commission,
Distinguished guests,
Your Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,

It is my great honour today to have the opportunity – on behalf of all citizens of the Republic of Slovenia – to welcome the members of the European Commission to our country.

This warm welcome is an expression of our hospitality and our satisfaction that it is right here, in Ljubljana, that the Year of Intercultural Dialogue will start, an initiative which the citizens of Europe consider to be one of the most important guarantees of understanding, integration and progress in general.

Recently, a large part of Europe has removed the last obstacles preventing national borders being crossed freely. This has given people the opportunity to create new mutual contacts and to exchange their mutual cultures. The hope that Europe will come even closer to the ideals of a unified intellectual and cultural space is gradually becoming a reality. This is, therefore, the right time for us to discuss the requirements of cultural dialogue. Ljubljana and Slovenia as a whole are also the right place for such discussions. Here, the symbolism of intercultural dialogue is strong and it is directly connected to our historical experience.

For most of its history, the Slovenian nation managed to survive within the framework of wider political systems. Today we live as a sovereign nation in its own country within the European Union. Our independence was justified by the will of the people as expressed in a plebiscite. We experience the European Union as a friendly environment, which enables us to express our sovereignty while also taking part in broader integration processes. Intercultural dialogue is the basic element of our existence and our vision of our future.

Slovenia is a country, where culture is highly valued. Historically, the identity of the Slovenian nation is strongly linked to culture. However, we do not experience culture as something that separates us from other nations. On the contrary, Slovenia is a country where different cultures interwine. It is the point where three major European cultural traditions – the Slavic, the Germanic and the Romance – intersect. Our landscape is marked by the architectonic influences of the Alpine region, Central Europe and the Mediterranean. In our recent history we have absorbed many elements from the cultural heritage of south-eastern Europe. In our cultural aspirations, we are open to international cultural dialogue and to the innovations which are the essential precondition for such dialogue. But at the same time, we are aware of our history.

Europe has long been an area of wide intercultural dialogue and there are many experiences in the European tradition which can inspire us in our current efforts. Allow me to mention two examples from history that are related to this region.

This year we will celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of Primo¾ Trubar. Trubar belongs is one of the greatest minds of the Slovenian nation, as well as an important sixteenth-century European intellectual. He was a humanist inspired by the works of Erasmus and by the most distinguished writers and artists of the Italian Renaissance. Trubar was a religious reformer and corresponded with the leading thinkers of the German and Swiss Reformation movement. He also wrote books in the Slovene language and thereby laid the foundations of Slovene culture and its position in Europe. His work proves that there is no contradiction between the best achievements of the European spirit and the most important interests of the individual nation.

This year also marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Alberico Gentili. I would like to mention this great Italian jurist because his path crossed that of Trubar to some extent. For some time Gentili lived in Ljubljana and then, like Trubar, also in Tübingen. From there, Gentili travelled to Heidelberg and finally to Oxford, where he became professor and wrote his best works, which are among the foundations of modern international law. He is an example of how leading intellectuals of the time could make their home anywhere in Europe. Europe was their shared cultural territory.

However, both Trubar and Gentili were also refugees. They had to flee their countries because of their religious beliefs. Their fates demonstrate the broad cultural dialogue existing at that time, but they also alert us to the obstacles, restrictions and lack of dialogue imposed by the political, and ideological conditions of the time. Intercultural dialogue was neither at that time nor is it today a self-evident fact, but rather an achievement resulting from many individual, collective and political efforts.

Today, too, intercultural dialogue is not a self-evident fact but requires serious efforts. Of course, the challenges we face today are different. Besides bolstering dialogue within individual European cultures and within our shared European culture, we face challenges brought about by the need for dialogue with non-European cultures. Part of this dialogue must necessarily take place within Europe. This is because Europe is increasingly becoming an area of immigration.

For Europe, this is historically a new position. In the past, Europe sought room for its inhabitants to settle elsewhere in the world. Nowadays, in the period of great demographic changes and economic globalisation, the situation has changed and the need for immigration has increased. There are significant differences between European countries regarding the levels of cultural integration of immigrants, their possibilities to acquire a new citizenship and their integration in political life, as well as in other fields. Here we have many reasons for cultural dialogue.

In the past, certain European countries imported labour; afterwards, after the first generation, they began to realise that they had taken in people, human beings with all their needs and problems. The ghettoisation of immigrants and attempts to assimilate them fully proved equally ineffective. It became necessary to seek good examples of integration, which cannot exist without cultural dialogue, and this must constitute one of our priorities today.

The respect for human rights, the rule of law and the principle of non-discrimination are the necessary bases for members of an immigrant community to be integrated properly. This is a basis which must be provided for all immigrants, regardless of the distance separating them from the European cultural mainstream.

We face especially serious tasks in the integration of the Islamic cultural tradition into the European stream of culture and into intercultural dialogue. In this, however, there are no established positive historical models that we can count on. These have been but few in our recent history; some of which could be found in the area of south-eastern Europe, in the former Yugoslavia. We should make every effort to identfy the positive – albeit not very high-profile – values which were generated in this context and which may; potentially, exist even now. It will require a great deal of serious reflection, including rigorous scientific thinking and research.

Ladies and gentlemen,
intercultural dialogue continues to be an universal need. Europe must enter into it in a responsible manner. It must eliminate the impression that it is closing up, that it is becoming a fortress accessible only to the chosen few. Europe’s presence and assistance in other regions, especially on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, must be more ambitious and innovative. Opening up is a two-way street – it means that outsiders should be given proper access to Europe but also that Europe should go out and establish proper contact with them.

This is precisely why intercultural dialogue depends vitally on the universal values it must promote. In addition to human rights, this category includes peace, progress and human solidarity. All these values are intrinsic to European intercultural dialogue and must be made clear to the whole world. This is important in our time, for the world has never been so connected nor at the same time so divided as it is today. The processes of globalisation have connected us all globally but have distributed the fruits of that connectedness unequally. Large areas of the world and many people live in intolerable conditions and with no hope for the future. People deprived of any form of culture on account of their poverty cannot participate in intercultural dialogue. Although intercultural dialogue cannot resolve these issues, it must highlight them and be directed at reinforcing universal human values and contributing towards building realistic hopes for a fairer world.

This need is not a new one; it has been enshrined in legal and institutional form ever since the founding of the United Nations Organisation. At that time too, there was a poweful awareness of the importance of universal values. These values could not be put into practice immediately; however, the political wisdom of the time required that the legal bases be established for a new kind of international cooperation – to promote collective safety, social development and human rights. Thanks to this wisdom the world is a better place than it once was. However, it is not better for everyone and it is not better enough. This us something that we also have to take into account in Europe as we begin this year of intercultural dialogue, and on this occasion must be devoted to global needs.

Nowadays, Europe cannot exist except as a part of the global world. Only an appropriate role in the global world can bring Europe the future and its inhabitants the progress they expect. Intercultural dialogue, too, is something we must develop in the global context. So let us be Europeans and proud citizens of our countries, but let us also be Europeans and citizens of the world! This is the spirit in which I greet you today and believe that intercultural dialogue will make a genuine contribution to bettering both Europe and the world.

Thank you.