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5/9/13

It's Europe Day, but Europeans don't seem to know - by Sara Miller Llana

T oday is Europe Day. It marks a pivotal declaration by French foreign minister for foreign affairs, Robert Schuman, on May 9, 1950, that led to the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community and essentially the foundation of the European Union.

n theory, Europe Day should be comparable to Bastille Day in France or the Fourth of July in the US. Instead, it’s hard to find people who actually know what it is.

One history professor did, but this was his take: “It’s nothing.” Pieter Lagrou, a contemporary European history professor at the Free University of Brussels, says he likes to tell his students the obscurity of the holiday marks "the symbolic deficit of Europe.”

The central question of "What is Europe?" is being picked apart across and beyond the continent. In the midst of debt crisis, nations are fighting to get in, questioning getting out and even splitting in two, and bickering over banking unions and political control and sovereignty.

On the ground – the level at which citizens take time to raise a flag and celebrate, or at least ponder, their national founding – it’s also an exceedingly hard question to answer.
Dr. Lagrou used himself as an example. He’s a Dutch-speaking Belgian, living in bilingual Brussels, with a French employer. His regional government and federal government are accountable to him. But so are his EU representatives.

Each year, around Europe Day, the EU opens its doors to the public, so citizens get an inside look at the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council of the European Union, the Commission, the Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions, and the Office of the Ombudsman. These kinds of events, of any governmental institution, are often disregarded as hokey. But it might be as important a time as ever to sign up for the tour. I know I wish I had.

Read more: It's Europe Day, but Europeans don't seem to know - CSMonitor.com

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