EPP-ED Group:

Politics and Religion

Catholic Churches

Cracow, September 16, 2002

Hans-Gert Poettering, Chairman of the EPP-ED Group:

Does Christianity have any influence on European politics?

The Chairman of the EPP-ED Group in the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering, spoke about the meaning of Christian values in the process of European integration in an address to come 200 participants at a conference on Modernisation and Faith - Role of the Catholic Church in the Process of European Integration held in Cracow.

His speech, entitled "Do Christian Values Influence the Politics of European Parties", stressed that the sanctity of the human person and solidarity with the weakest members of society had profoundly shaped European integration. From the time of the founding father onwards, the individual person had been central to the whole business of European unification, so that the Christian view of man really had been crucial to building Europe - even if the EU was of course made up of secular states.

EU values, which were also anchored in the Treaty of Rome, were of the essence; human dignity, indivudual freedom, tolerance, solidarity and subsidiarity were all fundamentally influenced by a Christian view of Man.

Such values were strongly defended by the EPP-ED Group in the European Parliament as well as in the programme of the European People's Party, Poettering said, going on to emphasize that Poland, in the heart of Europe, was a key part of the process of unifying Europe, even though it had - for historical reasons - been excluded from the process for 50 years.

Poland however had a function in catalysing the historical process, in which it permeated itself with Christian values of freedom against totalitarian communism. Poettering stressed that "This is something which we must never forget in the debate about enlargement and in particular about the accession of Poland to the European Union. This historical success must not be measured on the basis of petty criteria." He raised in this connection the need for the European Union to show the same solidarity with the accession states as with the Member States of the European Union. Though he drew attention also for an admonition to be given to Polish interlocutors, namely that any help from Brussels had to be support for self-help and that the lion's share of the work of states which receive EU aid had to be performed by them.

Poettering discussed the important rôle which the European Parliament was playing in connection with the defence and protection of human rights, as for example through motions for resolution for urgent debate and through the award of the Sakharov Prize. The EPP-ED Group commits itself repeatedly for ethical values as in the recent debate on bioethics, during which the Group expressed itself against the creation of embryos for research purposes and against embryo stem cell research. Poettering stressed that "In the protection of human dignity and of life there can be no compromise." For this reason the Group defends ethical limits in research.

With regard to an accession treaty for Turkey to the European Union, Poettering explained that through approval of the reform package in summer by the Turkish Parliament, the basis for further progress in Turkey had been put in place, in that now it was a matter whether and how this would actually be translated in favour of the minorities' rights. There could be no diminution to the value system of the European Union, anchored as it is in the Copenhagen criteria. To these criteria belong mutual tolerance and the possibilities for practice of belief by the Christian minorities in Turkey, just at these possibilities are guaranteed for Islamic minorities in the states of the European Union.

The Conference, "Modernisation and Faith - The Rôle of the Catholic Church in the Process of European Integration," took place 13-14 September 2002 in Cracow. The conference was organised under the umbrella of Cardinal Frantisek Macharski, Archbishop of Cracow, in conjunction with the Pontifical Theological Academy in Cracow, the Robert Schuman Foundation, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and COMECE.

For more information: Katrin Ruhrmann, Tel: +32 475 493357