Sabine Buchwald
European Angst

What is ‘European Angst’? Is it the extension of ‘German Angst’ to a whole continent? The latter term is often used disparagingly to describe the German tendency to problematise, weigh up and hesitate, especially when reasons for this seem slight and insignificant. But European Angst has nothing to do with stereotypical overscrupulousness. It is a mass of powerful emotions which transcend national borders and therefore seemed a fitting title for a conference which was to address disturbing developments, including populism, extremism and Euroscepticism.

When preparations started in spring 2016, the initiators of the conference, Susanne Höhn, Regional Director of the Goethe-Institut for Southwest Europe, and Cristina Nord, Director of Cultural Programming for Southwest Europe, at the Goethe-Institut in Brussels could scarcely have anticipated some of the political events of that year: neither the decision of the British people to vote for a Brexit nor the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. But even then they felt the disquiet at the heart of the EU, which gave reasons for concern about the European peace project. The fear that populist parties such as the AfD in Germany, the Front National in France or UKIP in Britain could, with their growing influence, challenge the bases of our community and cast doubt on our shared values has become even stronger over the last few months. Their popularity continues to rise. We only need to look at Poland and Hungary to find another example of Europe’s foundations being shaken. During two intensive conference days on 6 and 7 December, the participants at the BOZAR art and cultural centre in Brussels addressed this anxiety. They asked questions about the causes, found answers and even developed some hopeful approaches for the future.

Interest in the event was enormous. Although the conference took place in midweek during the run-up to Christmas, 1,500 members of the public as well as 50 journalists had registered to attend. With the topics picked for the four panel discussions and the selection of the panellists the organisers had, it seemed, struck a chord. Interviews with the prominent guests had been much in demand even before the start of the conference, and enquiries came from as far away as China. The experts not only came from different countries and backgrounds and brought knowledge from a range of disciplines, but also complemented each other, often entertainingly, with their different temperaments. Next to the energetically gesticulating Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, for example, the Turkish-British writer Elif Shafak seemed like an icon of calm dispassion. She stressed several times that she empathised with the fear that many people felt but called on the audience not to allow it to become the leitmotif.

The sociologist and writer Paul Scheffer from the Netherlands presented well-founded arguments in his discussion with Firas Alshater, a Berlin-based Syrian with a popular channel on YouTube, who shared his own experience as a migrant. Sonia Seymour Mikich, editor-in-chief of the German TV channel Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), and Łukasz Warzecha, a Polish journalist who works for conservative weekly Do Rzeczy, needed the balancing moderation of their colleague Beppe Severgnini from Italy. For it soon became clear that Mikich and Warzecha hold very different views on the role of the media and cannot find any consensus about how to deal with fake news on the internet. While Mikich supports regulatory intervention, Warzecha believes that responsibility rests solely with the readers and viewers.

The tone was considerably calmer on the panel with the political scientist Vladimira Dvoráková from the Czech Republic, the French philosopher Didier Eribon, and Shermin Langhoff, artistic director of the Berlin Maxim Gorki Theater. Their discussion, chaired by the Belgian journalist Béatrice Delvaux, opened the conference on Tuesday afternoon. They agreed that it was high time to listen properly to the disaffected, the potential voters of populist parties of the right. All three called for actively supporting a free Europe. ‘Vote!’ urged Eribon, and Langhoff demanded: ‘We have to fight together’.

Europe is not a melting pot

The often contrasting opinions were complemented and challenged by commentaries from 41 students, who were also part of the panel. The inclusion of these young people made the conference into an exceptional event – quite possibly the first of its kind.

The Goethe-Institut has put a lot of effort into finding these students. The first contact was made via an open invitation to European universities. Student liaison during the conference was provided by Else Christensen-Redzepovic. Out of 800 applicants the students were selected according to their personal statements, previous social engagement and their nationality. Most were there to represent the EU states and the countries bordering on them, but some came from further afield: the fact that there were also students from Australia, the United States, Vietnam and Indonesia side by side on the panel showed how open Europe has been until now. Many of them had never been to Brussels before, let alone participated in such a high-profile conference.

After a rather quiet start, their voices on the second day could be heard much more clearly, and they were sometimes refreshingly unconventional. One student suggested that maybe ‘political correctness has to be overcome in order to get the future we are hoping for’, advocating provocation, just like Žižek, who had defiantly made the case for Donald Trump before the US presidential elections. Now at Bozar, he described Trump as a nightmare, a great danger. Off-stage, Žižek was surrounded like a rock star by students eager to take selfies with him.

What the young guests all had in common was that they study at a European university and speak English, the lingua franca of the conference. In their diversity they clearly illustrated what Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, President of the Goethe-Institut, explained in his opening address. He did not consider Europe to be a ‘melting pot’ that homogenises the characteristics and contours of the different countries. For him, it rather resembles a ‘mosaic’, framed by a common European responsibility and resting on a foundation of rule of law and democracy. As repeatedly became clear during the two days, this foundation is crucial for German cultural policy and practice, and essential for making events such as the conference European Angst to a success, fruitful for participants and public.

Freedom cannot be taken for granted

The freedom to express our opinion about politicians or social injustice without fearing reprisals, even the freedom to travel, none of this can be taken for granted. This is something that the delegates from the former Eastern bloc have experienced themselves – the political scientist Vladimira Dvoráková and the journalist Martin Ehl from the Czech Republic, who chaired this session, as well as the Polish journalist Łukasz Warzecha.

That Firas Alshater could only debate with Paul Scheffer via a video link, visible to everyone on a huge screen above the heads of the panellists, showed what sort of restrictions are imposed on migrants. Alshater had come to Berlin three years earlier, but his current status did not permit even a short exit from Germany. His answer to the question by the Austrian journalist Isolde Charim on how he felt in Europe was laconic: ‘Nobody decides to be a refugee’. He pointed out how difficult it was to start from zero again in a completely foreign place and to learn a foreign language. Under the pseudonym Zukar he talks about his experiences in Germany in humorous YouTube clips. Especially because he – like Scheffer – urgently pleads for a contact between cultures, it was regrettable that he could only be present via a screen.

Disdain for foreigners

But what Alshater can do is to talk frankly and openly about what he feels and thinks, whether he is talking to Berliners or to us in Brussels. To all those who had forgotten for a moment what the right to free expression means, Herta Müller’s talk on the first evening was an eye-opener. It was a piece of literature for which the Nobel laureate received long applause. She talked about the cruelty of the Romanian dictatorship and its perfidious secret service, about fear mongers, fear biters and decades of xenophobia in Eastern Europe. ‘Today we are dealing with the xenophobia from back then’, she said. ‘The disdain for foreigners arose in the period of dictatorship.’

So the explanation can be found in the recent past, a past of which many may have thought that it had been overcome by the opening of the borders. ‘The need for paternalism is back’, Müller explained, and this was a regression that nobody had anticipated. ‘Neither Western Europe nor the Eastern Europeans themselves.’

For this reason alone, she said, there could not be business as usual, and people had to build resistance to populists and right-wing movements. This seemed to be a consensus in all four discussions. People had to finally get out of their comfort zone, said Michael Metz Mørch, Danish director of EUNIC, the network of European cultural institutes, in his speech on Wednesday.

On the previous day, Eribon had already deplored the ignorance of the ‘ruling class’, the so-called elite, who did not seem interested in the lives of ordinary people. People distrusted established...