EU citizens can 'no longer fathom' EU project

More than 50 years after the creation of the EU, the ‘aims and meaning’ of the European project remain unanswered, according to bishops from around Europe.

They say that ratification of the reform treaty will still not solve these “crucial” questions.

That was the keynote message to emerge from the plenary assembly of the commission of the bishops’ conference of the European community (COMECE).

COMECE president, Monsignor Adrianus van Luyn, said, “We are now all aware that, as a rule, the ‘how’ questions are the easiest.

“It is harder to answer questions that start with ‘why’ and ‘wherefore’. Behind the day-to-day business of politics, the vast majority of people can no longer recognise or fathom why things are going in one direction or another.

“Behind politics resides metapolitics, which forms the values upon which all political action is based, above and beyond party lines.”

Van Luyn, who is also the bishop of Rotterdam, was speaking at the twice-annual gathering of leading bishops from all over Europe.

The treaty, which is expected to come under the spotlight at this week’s EU summit, was one of the issues debated at the COMECE event, held in Brussels on Thursday and Friday last week.

A COMECE spokesman said the plenary had given bishops the chance to reflect on the “fundamental” question of how citizens' support for the EU can be mobilised and how this might be “translated” into “concrete” goals.

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