Is the EU based on "European values"? Let's talk about universal human rights and the rule of law, instead

my speech to the students of the European School on Europe Day, May 9th 2025

Yesterday, Europe Day, I was asked to talk to the older students of the European School @ Munich about “European values” - here s what I said:

I must confess that when I was asked by your professors and teachers to give a talk in your school about European values for a moment I considered declining the invitation.

“European values” has become an ubiquitous catch phrase, you hear it everywhere, it seems to have lost its meaning, sometimes it even seems to me it has become a rhetorical way of expressing superiority to other cultures. And the history of the past centuries has been shaped a lot by the feeling of superiority of we, the pale skinned people from Europe, over the darker-skinned people living on other continents. I know very well that the “European values” I have been asked to speak about to you today are not meant to be the superiority of Western culture and society over other cultures and other societies, but something much more democratic and inclusive. However sometimes the tone with which these two words are spoken in the public debate implies a moral high ground which disturbs me.

Furthermore, I can’t but observe the way in which all too often people who declare these lofty words in public speak also other words and, most importantly, undertake other actions, which are in blatant contradiction with them. Or they apply them only to some circumstances and events, and not to others. Many citizens in Europe, for instance are very disturbed at how EU political leaders correctly – and I agree with them – quote the defense of human rights and of democracy or, again, of “European values” when speaking about our duty as Europeans to help Ukraine defend itself – and again, I agree with them – but seem to forget our duty to uphold human rights also when it comes to the people of Gaza, from which, just to mention one detail of the unspeakable situation in which they are in, it is two months now that food relief trucks are barred from entering. I will not go into the reasons and events of Israel and Palestine because that is a very different, very complicated conversation, as I am sure you are aware; but I also know for sure that starving people who cannot run away has nothing to do with our “values”, our principles, and even less with human rights, and therefore we should do something about it. And sometimes this double standard is frankly difficult to accept.

And yet.

And yet I do believe that there is such a thing as a system of principles in which I, a democratic European, identify myself with, and in which the democratic society you and I live in identifies itself with and, most importantly, on which our political systems, laws and Constitutions, are based. And I also recognize that we live in times, especially since the attack to democratic institutions and to the rule of law which the Trump presidency is relentlessly carrying on in the USA, in which Europe is the continent in which these founding principles are more widespread and consistently applied by our institutions. Not perfectly, no, also because perfection never applies to human experiences - but certainly on a more reliable scale than anywhere else. So yes, you can say that by sheer size – Europe , and specifically the EU plus UK - is the largest part of the world where these principles are being defended, and even if we take only the European Union, with our half a billion citizens, we are by far the largest democratic collective on this planet.

However, I will argue that to better understand what these principles are, and therefore be able to defend them, we need a much better working definition than the two words “European values”. In other words, I don’t think the right words are neither “European” nor “values”.

Let me explain why.

The first part is apparently easy: not only European countries follow democratic principles. What about Canada, or Australia, or even South Korea, where just a few months ago an authoritarian president wanted to subvert democracy and the rule of law but he was stopped, firstly and most importantly by Korean citizens who flooded the streets against him in mass protests, and then by a series of constitutional court rulings. Or take Chile, a complicated but vibrant democracy which has managed to overcome the horrific legacy of Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship which sunk Chile into fascism in the 70’s and 80’s. Or take Ghana. Ghana is in the world’s top 25 per cent of countries with regard to several factors which determine if a state is democratic or not, and although recently it has down-slided somewhat in its democratic index , it certainly has done so much less than Hungary under Viktor Orban. And Hungary is not only a European country, it’s also a member of the European Union. However, have you ever heard Ghana being mentioned as a functioning democracy? I would guess not, and my guess is because it’s in Africa, and our media gives little attention to that continent unless the news are about some war or famine or terrible calamity. So you maybe start to understand why I have an uneasy feeling about using this word “European” as a synonym for “democratic”. Although it’s not wrong to say that the democratic institutions of Ghana or Korea are framed in accordance to principles and ideas which started being developed on our continent, the fact is that ideas and political s experiences have a life of their own, and history moves on so much so that there comes a point in which these ideas and experiences don’t belong to any single place anymore, but to all humankind. And democracy is certainly one of them.

But the word I have more problems with is the other one: “Values”

What exactly are values?

Today we celebrate, rightfully, the 80^th anniversary of the end of the nightmare brought upon our continent by Nazism (by the way, another very European invention. I will read you the entry from a diary of a German woman from that day, Adolfine Schumann, 29 years old, who worked as a secretary. She lived in Vienna but she considered herself a German, as did all “Aryan” inhabitants of the Third Reich. Here is what she wrote

“May 8^th, 1945: the day of Peace! I see a troop of German prisoners escorted by Russians. From one day to the next heroes have become criminals. Everything we had previously believed in is trampled into the dirt. We are supposed to recognize that we too are to blame and cannot expect mercy. I take refuge in my diary, only here I can say what I feel”.

I have no idea who Adolfine Schumann was. I read this quotation in an exhibition about the end of the war, and I just know from the label attached to it that she lived a very long life, from 1916 until 2014, so when she died she was almost 100 years old. That’s many, many years in which to change your mind, to see things from another perspective – but I don’t know if Adolfine ever did.
What I can know from these words is just that for her what was being destroyed that day was “everything she had previously believed in” – which is another way of saying exactly what we are talking about, that is, her values. And that until that day, the day of Germany’s capitulation, she had considered the Wehrmacht soldiers as men who defended those values, therefore as her heroes.

Problem is, the values she is talking about are the values of Nazism.

The same “values” which provoked tens of millions of victims from Paris to Stalingrad, and whose legacy are the death camps of Auschwitz and Dachau.

From now, from here, from 80 years later, it is very easy for us to say that what she believed in were not values at all, but a fascist ideology based on cruelty and violence. But that’s clearly not how she saw it. She was probably not a rabid ideologue, and my guess is that she didn’t commit terrible crimes herself, or she wouldn’t have been able to stay quietly writing her diary at home as the Soviets were marching in the streets - she would have been on the run trying to avoid being killed or, possibly an even worse fate, arrested by them. She was a just a secretary, an ordinary German who had lived most of her adult life in a society in which the “values” she had identified with were simply the only ones which one could hold in the society she lived in.

So you see, what I am trying to say to you is that Adolfine too had her values. Adolfine too, until the moment when the war was lost, and enemy armies were marching in her city’s streets arresting the soldiers of her army, until that moment she thought those values were good ones. So much so that she writes that she is now “supposed”, to recognize that they were wrong, and that she “should” be blamed for them. She is not writing that she “understands” how wrong and dangerous they were – indeed, she shows bewilderment and resentment at the idea that she should now change her mind; that she’s asked to “trample in the dirt” everything she believed in, and, even more bewildering to her, that she should feel guilty because she believed in them.

So my question to you is: how can we know that our values are better than Adolfine’s?

We believe in them just as much as she did, right?

What’s the difference between us, supporters of these “European values” and her? A simple secretary of the Third Reich without a higher education who since she was a child had believed in what she was being told, and what she had been told were Nazi values; who was surrounded by people who had been told the same things, and had believed them just as much as she had.

This is my question for you: how do we know, truly know – because we do deeply KNOW – that our values are better than hers? We too are surrounded by people who think our values are good, just like we do. What is the difference between us and her?

Does anybody have an answer?

(listening to answers, if there are any)

So, I’ll tell you what I think it is.

The difference between us and Adolfine has nothing to do with who we are and who she was as individuals.

It’s not about us, and it’s not even her. We are not necessarily better than her – she lived through a time of traumas and hardships of which we have no idea plus, again, we have no idea how she lived the rest of her life, so it would be presumptuous to pass any judgment. So no, this is not about us feeling superior to an unknown person who lived 80 years ago.

It’s not even about the content of her values, however abhorrent we might consider them, and we should consider them abhorrent, I agree with that. But as you know nowadays, unfortunately, both in Germany and in my country Italy, and in Europe in general, there are again quite a few people who have ideas about the world not so different to those “heroes” which were now being made prisoners by the Allies’ forces, and who Adolfine was watching as they were marched away. There are again too many people who again believe – or maybe they belong to a section of society that never stopped believing - that some human beings are more valuable than others, that some have more rights than others. In other words, that some human beings are superior to others, exactly like the Nazis did. And there are even political parties representing these views.

The fundamental difference between Adolfina and us, the only significant difference but it’s a gigantic one, is that we have the incredible fortune of living in countries which have democratic institutions, which are based on Constitutions founded on the rule of law, on the balance of powers, and which recognize the existence of basic rights to all human beings - first and foremost the right to freedom of speech without which every other right can be taken away in any moment and nobody can do anything about it because if they protest they will be arrested and killed. Which instead was the society in which Adolfina lived all her adult life.

And all of these structures of a democratic society are based on a fundamental premise. Can you tell me what the fundamental premise of democracy is?

(listening to answers, if any)

The fundamental premise of democracy is conflict.

Yes, conflict.

Democracy is based on the acknowledgment that people are very different one from the other. And that these differences very often clash with each other because people have very different interests, priorities and yes, even very different values. And having different values is not only allowed in a democracy: it’s encouraged. But by recognizing and even encouraging the existence of this diversity, democratic societies understand and acknowledge that sometimes, or even often, these values will be in conflict with each other. And so a whole structure of institutions is designed in order to carry out this conflict in the most peaceful and fair way, in a way which never allows one single view point, one single interest - and even less one single person – to ever gain absolute total power over the others, and even less exercise violence on the others.

So institutions are created with the precise purpose to be able to express this conflict, first of all our parliaments where different, sometimes vastly different opinions, instances, needs, interests and viewpoints on the world are discussed and, eventually must reach a majority of votes in order to be turned into laws, and this sometimes takes long, even extenuating discussions. “Parlare” in latin means to talk, and this is what you do in Parliaments:: people who have very different opinions talk, instead of shooting at each other.

And even after laws are passed, there are checks and balances in order that those who apply these laws don’t overstep their power, and when a citizen breaks one of these laws they will also be granted due process and a fair trial in order to prove if really the law was broken, or not, and no citizen can be convicted of a crime without due process. And since the whole system is devised so that no single organism or institution or person or viewpoint should ever have absolute power, every power must always have a corresponding power which can keep it in check.

The basic assumption of democracy is not just the acknowledgment of the existence of conflict in every group, but also the assumption that power must always be kept in check because every unchecked power, even the one which starts with the best intentions, will turn into abuse if it is left without limits.

You can say that it’s a pessimistic view of human beings. Especially if you compare it with the stated description of society which, in contrast, authoritarian regimes and dictatorships make. And yet, and this is the paradox of democracy, this pessimistic or, let’s say, skeptical view of human nature produces a much more tolerant, diverse, inclusive society, exactly because it regulates both the handling of differences and the exercise of power.

Totalitarian thought instead has a much more seductive premise: it says “We the good people of course all agree with each other, there is no conflict among us, only harmony, we are like a great loving family, an undifferentiated people – Das Volk - because of course there is only one right and good opinion, only one right and good set of values which Is the right on, and that’s the one we believe in”.

Then why are there any problems in the world, why don’t we all live in paradise if we are all so good?

Their answer is: because there are the “Others”.

And the only conflict is with THEM.

The “others” are those who either think differently, or have other values, or have another ethnicity or religion, or gender identification, or speak another language, or whatever it is that sets them apart from “us”, the good, deserving “people”. and they are always referred to as “they”. What “they” want and do is almost always dangerous, wrong, fanatical, threatening, barbaric, and different from “us”. The values of these Others are not just different from “ours”, no, they are an Enemy. And next thing you know, speaking to those who are different or think differently and trying to find common ground is substituted by violence, people get arrested in the middle of the night and disappear in torture chambers, and concentration camps start being built. And the more a regime becomes authoritarian, then totalitarian, the more it becomes thinkable and possible to imagine that the only solution is to annihilate “Those Other ones” once for all.

Nowadays, the political actors who think this way know they can’t say directly that they are the only good and right ones. They must pretend they play the game of democracy so they pay lip service to it. So do you know what many of them do, in order to advance their discriminating idea that there are some Others which are not quite like uUs? They appeal to--- guess what? To European Values.

We, the good ones who believe in European values.

They, the Others, for instance the Muslims, who do not.

And do you know what values Putin appeals to defend in order to crush all opposition at home? Yes, you guessed it: traditional European values, which he claims to defend against their degenerations, especially – it’s a real obsession for him - LGBTQ rights. And even more perversely he uses the victorious fight against Nazism, whose 80^th anniversary we are celebrating in these days, as a reason for his fascist aggression against Ukraine.

We have come full circle, and maybe now you see better why I am not such a fan of the expression European values. And why I prefer that what we care about , what we set ourselves the defend, are not our opinions but rather the democratic institutions which allows us to have different opinions.

But this is not to say that I do not believe there are some principles which should guide us. They exist, and they do. But these foundational principles on which democracies are based are not generic, fuzzy concepts of goodness which, as we have seem can be used in many ways, These basic principles have a name: universal human rights. And they were written in a declaration which I invite you all to read and to treasure in your lives, and which was written in 1948, just 3 years after Adolfina wrote her diary, and it was written precisely so that her “values” would never ever destroy so many lives again.

And if we believe that there are universal human rights, as our democracies claim to do, then this means that in case of need we must be ready to defend them.

We are not used to thinking this way, because since we were born we were never in danger of losing our fundamental human rights, our freedoms– not just you, but even I who am so much older than you. And yet this is not always the case, nor anywhere, As we speak, young people your age or just a little older have been out in the streets of Belgrade for months now protesting against the corruption and authoritarian slant of their government. They wave European flags. In Georgia, masses of people have been protesting since months , many being arrested and some even killed, with European Flags draped on their shoulders. Why? Because they want to have the same democratic institutions based on human rights which we have. And Ukraine. Do you know how the young people of Ukraine called the revolution they enacted against the corrupt filo Russian regime 11 years ago? Euro Maidan. Maidan is the main square of Kyiv, where many of them died in this fight, and Euro----- well, that is us. Our democracy. Our checks and balances between powers so that nobody becomes too powerful.

So I will finish with two exhortations:

First, by all means believe in what you want, be what you want to be, support whatever values you deem important, but never ever believe in anyone that tells you that your values are a good reason to oppress, discriminate, exclude, hate, consider inferior, kill or wage war against other people.

Secondly, be ready to defend, and sometimes even fight for, the democratic institutions which are based on universal human rights and which allow us all to be in peaceful conflict with each other. Your young counterparts in Georgia, in Beograd, in Ukraine, in Iran and in many other places are literally risking their lives in order to have them or to keep them. They are literally ready to die for them. More than any politician, more than any writer coming to give a speech in your school, they are the ones telling you, telling me, telling all of us, how precious those institutions and those rights are.

Thank you

©Francesca Melandri – Speech @ European School Munich, 9^th May 2025