The 4th of February 1945 saw the meeting of
Winston Churchill with Stalin and Roosevelt at Yalta to discuss the shape
of post-war Europe. Those leaders, nearly 70 years ago, could hardly have
imagined Europe as it is today.
Air travel, once the preserve of the few has come into
the reach of many. The internet means we can communicate across Europe
(and the world) at the click of a mouse. News which 70 years ago would have
taken weeks to appear in the papers can now be seen almost instantaneously
on television or tablet. With shops today full of all kinds of produce it
is hard to envisage that in immediate post war Europe starvation was a
reality.
The last 70 years have not been without problems. There has
been a military coup in Greece, dictatorship in Spain, ethnic cleansing and
massacres in the Balkans, financial instability in the Euro-zone... But for the
most part, European citizens have enjoyed peace, stability and increasing
affluence.
This year is likely to be a year in which Europe’s future is
once again under debate with elections of MEPs and a promise of a referendum on
the EU at some future date. What sort of Europe do we want to live in? The
various political parties and the newspapers will all be outlining their views.
It would be wrong of me to offer any thoughts about any one view of Europe’s
future. However I would like to offer two things I hope for about the
debate.
First, I hope that the debate about the future can be based
in facts, not in myths and misunderstanding. Recent research shows that
what we may think about Europe (and the EU in particular) may be inaccurate.
For example Yougov research shows that most people in this country think that
one in three of EU migrants to the UK are on the dole. The actual figure is
less than three in every hundred.
Secondly, I hope that debate will be rooted in Europe’s
Christian heritage, a heritage which places emphasis on the need to show
hospitality to the outsider.
