Study On European Unification From Angle Of Culture

On March25, 2007, German Premier, Chairman of the European Union (the EU) Committee and President of the European Parliament signed"Manifesto of Berlin", in which the glory and dream of the EU is summarized-We are European citizens. There are 27countries, more than 4 million square kilometers and 480 million populations in the EU now, on whose vast mainland peace, stability and prosperity are realized. In the past 5 decades, unification of economy and currency is realized in the EU, and Euro (EUR) becomes unified currency. Boundary is cancelled inside the EU, which brings free movement of people, so the dream of European unification is coming nearer.The modern history of Europe is that of dispute and plunder, but the existed force of maintaining Europe to unification has never disappeared, neither have the Europeans'efforts to form the"Big Europe". Although the toughness of the devotion to European unification is called unreasonable feeling by someone, it involves lots of reasonable elements. Father of Europe once said, if it could start again, he would start with culture, which shows that European unification has to be built on the basis of common cultures but not only on the development of economy. The classical source of European civilization and the coincidence of Middle Ages'religion bring the coincident features to European cultures, which brings European nations easy identity, and, as a result, the basic premise and potential motive force of European unification are prepared. The generality among European nations is the largest compared with that of the other continent. The majority of Europeans belong to Europa race with its languages belonging to Indo-European family and they have an ancient Greek and Roman civilization source. The written history of most European countries starts from the arrival of Roman army group and the enforcement of Roman laws except for Greek and Slav countries. Something Roman can be found in any important European city. Since the latter period of Roman Empire, the Christian church had substituted for the armed expedition of Roman Empire and became the force to maintain European Unification. The Religious Reform collapsed the framework of the unified Roman church's theocracy and rooted the sense of Europe deep in the hearts of the people, and Europeans realized the significance of unification through the painful wars. As the greatest and progressive reform mankind had ever experienced, the Renaissance makes Modern Europe unified on ideology and culture style, and from angle of proposing European unification, its representative figures'objection to Christian church plays the same role with Christian church's ambition to keep Christian world unified. The ancient Greek and Roman civilization, Christian and the Renaissance together found the cultural basis of European unification.Culture maintains and hinders European unification at the same time. European cultures which originated from ancient Greek civilization absorb the excellence of it and also inherit all non-Greek ideas which are considered as uncivilized. The tradition of denying and excluding other cultures makes European unification lack of general European cultures basis. Languages used in the EU are rich and varied as the expressive tools. Although Greek, Latin, French and English were used as common language in Europe, languages become obstacle towards European unification with the appearance of European languages protectionism and supremacy. The sense of Europe gradually formed in the religious fighting, especially in the one between Christian and Islamism, and the title of European came into being during the process of the Crusades East Expedition. With the split of Roman church, the Religious Reform led by Martin Luther plunged Europe into the religious riots, and modern European national countries came into being in the religious wars after the collapse of the unified Catholic Europe. The formation of European national countries is the result of their fighting for living space and limited resources on narrow lands, and there were war maniacs trying to unify Europe by force during this period. Multi-language, religion, contradiction and conflicts among clans have always restricted the process of European Unification.In order to achieve the integration of politics on the basis of that of economy, the EU starts to construct fragile Europe Identity to supply spiritual supports for its unification. Under the principles that European Community will involve in expanding common culture legacy, developing cultures of member countries and respecting the cultural variety of all countries and regions, the EU carried out a series of programs such as Program Arian, Program Raphael, Program Kaleidoscope and Program mass media, and constructed European common cultures by means of making the EU flag and song so as to make it possible for common people's general Europe sense. The cultural policies of the EU to some extent close, fuse and strengthen the economic and political achievements of the integration, which lays a foundation for European unification and at the same time pre-lays hidden trouble-The cultural policies of the EU emphasize European generality which is used to differentiate"otherness"at the same time set apart Europe and"the other", that is, old cultural obstacles are diminished while a new cultural fortress of European culture is set up.Europe is a mainland with a galaxy of humanism from angle of culture, and the variety of culture is the source of human progress and vitality of Europe. As flexible power compared with fixed power, such as economy, politics and military, cultures play complicated roles in the process of European unification, and maintain and hinder it at the same time. European unification has to be realized by constructing the cultural idea on which all European nations could get along peacefully with, co-operate and develop. The construction of European cultures is an endless process, for general cultural identity can not be accomplished in one move. The prominent figures of European intellectuals believe that differences have to be recognized-recognizing the"otherness"in"the other', as is possibly be a common identified feature.