Euromedia

Europe, the anti-America?

Many young Europeans are not clear on how to charactize what it means to be European, according to this International Herald Tribune article, except to say that it is everything that the US is not. The lack of self-identity has to do with the long history and various cultures that make up the European Union, blurring a clear identity, which will become even more unclear as 10 more countries join the union.

I think this article is very insightful for non-Europeans in general, but especially for us, since it delves into the minds of Europeans in their 20s and 30s and shows how they view themselves and the difficulties and complexities involved. It's as if they need America to define who they are, which signifies how strong of an influence the US has had globally and supports the notion of Imperialism.

International Herald Tribune
For young Europeans, identity questions
BY Sarah Lyall

Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

For young Europeans, identity questions
Sarah Lyall/IHT
Thursday, March 4, 2004

PRAGUE As one of the new generation of European businessmen who fly around the Continent as readily as others might take the bus across town, Petr Eisler feels at home in Europe, mostly. It is only now and then, like when he arrives at the immigration desk at London's Heathrow Airport, that he is suddenly flung back into his old role as an outsider at the European party.

"They're always asking me how long I plan to stay, and do I have enough money with me," said Eisler, 39, who founded his software company in the Czech Republic more than a decade ago, speaks fluent English and recently opened an office in London. Once, he was traveling with a former industry minister of the Czech Republic and was startled to hear the same questions being asked of him, too - a sign, at least, that such Western inhospitality is nothing personal.

As the European Union prepares to open its doors to 10 new countries in May, people in their 20s and 30s interviewed here and elsewhere in Europe say that they feel part of the Continent yet separate from it. The feeling has partly to do with the way European countries have historically perceived each other, and partly to do with puzzlement about what Europe - not the physical place, but the philosophical concept - really is.

To the extent that there is an entity called Europe, with a distinguishable identity, culture and world view, many young Europeans say they are not so sure how to characterize it, except perhaps in describing what it is not. With America now the only real world power left in the post-Soviet landscape, there is a growing sense that Europe, in so far as it exists as an idea, can best be defined as the anti-America.

This appears to be true among the younger generation in Prague, part of the former communist Europe that has lately allied itself with the United States, even as Western Europe shies away from it.

"As with all identities, the easiest way to create an identity is to create it as against something else," said Adam Pulchart, 26, who is studying for a master's degree in European studies at Charles University in Prague.

"The rudimentary European identity I have is formed against the United States, against the image of America as the new imperialist superpower that regards everything that happens in the world in the context of its own national interest."

To some Czechs, American patriotism, particularly in the Bush era, is uncomfortably reminiscent of the Soviet rhetoric of old.

"I remember all of this from the Russians, the same treatment of history," said Tereza Spencerova, who writes for Mlady Svet, a weekly magazine. Spencerova said she recently heard a joke about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a hapless student who asked an uncomfortable foreign policy question and later mysteriously disappeared. She said she had heard the same joke 15 years ago, but with a Soviet official in place of Rumsfeld.

"Once Bush started the war against terrorism, he started to use strong language that was the same as what the Russians used, like 'Who's not for us is against us,'" Spencerova said. "Europeans get nervous when someone comes and says that his truth and his world view are the only acceptable ones."

If Europe is not America, then what is it? Is there such a thing as a recognizable European identity?

It depends on whom you ask.

"Unfortunately, the answer is no," said Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the 37-year-old founder of the low-cost airline EasyJet. Born in Greece, Haji-Ioannou has homes in London, Monaco, New York and Athens, and is almost always on the road. He says he feels Greek in England, English in Greece and European in America.

"I wouldn't expect that everyone should suddenly feel European," he said. "Is someone from Alaska the same as someone from Florida? I think not."

Jan Vavra, the director and co-owner of a public relations firm in Prague, agreed. "For me, integration is good when it comes to commercial contracts and common legislation, but I don't believe there will be a new European man - there are too many differences in language and tradition from country to country," Vavra said in his office in a quiet corner of Prague.

"We can cooperate and be friends; we can make businesses and art together; and we can study in different countries. But that doesn't mean we will lose our nationality."

The more one scratches the surface, the more one realizes that many stereotypes still apply, at least in people's minds. To their European neighbors, the French are regarded as supercilious, the Germans as hyper-organized, the British as repressed and the Italians as chronically late.

"The global thinking is the same, but there are small, specific differences," said Zuzana Pitrova, 28, an executive at the Czech edition of Metro, a free newspaper with editions in 16 countries.

Pitrova said she was horrified when her boss, a Swede based in London, remained in his chair with his feet propped up on the table at their first meeting. "I'm a Czech woman, and I expect that a man will at least stand up when I walk into a room," she said.

Pitrova's European acquaintances do not consider her one of them, exactly. Her husband is American, and when they run into British friends, she said, "They look at me like, 'Oh, an Eastern-bloc chick who got married to an American so she could move to America.'" (For the record, the couple plans to move to Tokyo in the autumn.)

She said that with colleagues, too, her nationality can be a handicap. "They don't consider me European," she said. "They don't think my skills are as good as theirs, being from the Czech Republic."

The more Europeans come together, it seems, the more their differences are emphasized, even under an umbrella of similarities.

David Cerny, a 36-year-old sculptor in Prague, said "exaggerating national distinctions is part of the fun" of the new Europe.

Last summer, Cerny - who learned English from Beatles records and says he feels equally at home across the Continent - described the Czech population in an interview with a local newspaper as "an unmixed, uninteresting, slightly dumplingish, untanned mass" and lampooned "this constant stroking oneself on the belly stuffed with pork, sauerkraut and dumplings."

He applies the same broad view to other countries, too, particularly Germany. "It's like someone from New York talking about Texas," Cerny said. "Except that Texas never attacked New York and killed a couple of million people."

The tendency of national pride to slide into militant nationalism and even xenophobia is the dark side of European integration.

As the countries of Europe move closer together, their differences become exaggerated, especially to those who are suspicious of outsiders and worry about permeable borders, the influx of newcomers and a loss of national identity. Anticipating May 1, most West European countries have passed laws restricting the entry of workers from the new EU member countries, a cause of dismay to the poorer eastern countries.

In the Czech Republic, the post-Communist era has been marked by an increase in racial violence, particularly against members of the Roma minority, who have long been persecuted in central Europe.

Isolated during the Soviet era, Prague is more international than ever.

Americans by the tens of thousands moved here in the 1990s. Charles University is awash in students from across Europe who spend a semester or two under the auspices of the Erasmus and the Socrates programs, EU-sponsored exchanges.

But the country as a whole has a reputation for not welcoming outsiders.

"We're afraid of foreigners," Spencerova said. "A lot of people think that five minutes after we join the EU, our villages will be full of foreigners, and our traditions and language and culture will be destroyed. This fear is real. You can feel it in street corners, in newspapers, in political discussions."

What do the new Europeans have in common? Language, to a certain extent. When they travel, they tend to speak English, which has emerged as Europe's most readily accessible common language.

"I come from a generation where everyone pretty much speaks English, or at least tries to," said Gabriela Tomsikova, 29, a Czech who works in the Prague office of a Dutch electronics company.

"It's growing bigger and bigger. Even the French are speaking English now."

There are also shared political and cultural traditions. The United States is a country created from the bottom up; European countries were created from the top down. "There's a greater sense of history here," said Lucie Konigova, 28, a research fellow in the center for European analysis at the Institute of Foreign Relations in Prague. "We don't think in terms of individual rights as much, but in terms of social and community rights."

Cecile Antoine, 25, a Belgian who lives in Paris, said she felt that "Europe has a common thread that joins everyone together," at least for the younger generation, which has been raised on that notion.

"I feel like a European, though my roots are of course Belgian," said Antoine, who says she is just as happy in Paris as back home. Years of being part of the EU have instilled in her a sense that she is "part of a greater European community."

"All the countries from the Union have something in common, and I don't feel very different from a French person," she said.

There are signs that those who are even younger - teenagers who never knew the cold war - may be even more impervious to old-world national distinctions.

"My son is 15, and his way of thinking and seeing the world is very different from my point of view," said Spencerova, the Czech journalist. "It's 14 years from the revolution and he's just learned a new way of living which is completely different from the way that we were brought up. This new generation won't have a problem with definitions, with the difference between being Czech or German or something else."

Those in countries who are about to join the Union seem hopeful that long-established borders will fall away.

"The EU is looked at with a mixture of hope and trepidation," said Zuzanna Ziomecka, 27, who returned to Warsaw three years ago after living in the United States. "There's the thought that the EU might set standards we are having trouble setting ourselves, and might offer travel."

Not only will crossing Europe be easier for Poles - "I won't have to stand in long lines at the airport," Ziomecka said - but it will open Poland up to a new group of visitors.

"We'll be getting more people coming to Poland to see what a crazy place it is," she added, and "how much good can come from chaos."

International Herald Tribune

Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune

Posted by Rhashad Pittman at March 5, 2004 08:48 PM