"Europa,Európa” was the title of a film which told the story of a young boy who was almost murdered a dozen times during the Holocaust and WW2.

The title reminds us on the original sin of Europe and all the crimes and horrors what followed from it. The original sin was committed in the early summer of 1914 .This fateful accident has lead two world wars, the Spanish flue, two totalitarian states ,Auschwitz and the Gulag, several dictatorships, and several thousand million corpses only on this tiny continent, our small Asian peninsula.

It was from the growing awareness of this original sin that the idea of a unified Europe first emerged during the historic meeting between two conservative statesmen, De Gaulle and Adenauer. What has been decided during this meeting was the commitment of the two previously hostile powers never to incite a new European war. The two traditional enemies, France and Germany, cultivated from this moment friendly relations. Subsequently, the mutual elimination of distrust (to which Great Britain joined much later) resulted in mutual understanding, cooperation, and the agreement to pursue common goals.

Since time of the foundation of the European Union this original commitment was increasingly overshadowed by economic priorities. Overshadowed, yet not entirely forgotten,

The idea to forge an economic unity was not alien to the old European tradition. After all, Europe before WW1 was a continent of empires, all of them populated by several different ethnic groups and people Those empires, both the colonial and non colonial ones, competed with each other also on the economic field. National identity as ethnic ethic identity, nationalist ideology, gained momentum mostly within the empires. Simultaneously with the dissolution of the empires, which lasted from the end of WW1 until the collapse of the Soviet Union “,nation” was more and more identified with ethnic identity and even race. If I tried to describe the specificity of the European continent in one sentence today, I would say unhesitatingly, it is the very continent that consists of nation states.

There are happy nations in Europe, nations where nationalism and commitment to republican and other progressive values went hand in hand, like France. And there were and are unhappy nations which lived for centuries under the spell of either--or. Either cultivating the uniqueness of the nation or pursuing progress. In such unhappy nations nationalism became a battle cry against liberalism, against leftist ideas, against progress in general. Hungary was and remained such an unhappy nation.

Yet even the happiest of nation states practiced gross intolerance against all the so-called aliens who did not belong “originally” to the nation. Aliens were forced to assimilate, even overdo the “natives” in national pride and extreme nationalism.. Integration was out of question. Yesterday’s foreigners were accepted only as staunch nationalists All the newborn European nations, the great grandchildren of entirely different ethnic groups, of different cultures, ways of life, and even languages, of the great melting pot of Europe, behaved as if nation states would be the “natural” state of affairs ,and all other integrations artificial.

From e sixties of the previous century onwards the awareness grew that no single European nation state country could compete economically with the empires of quasi empires, such as the United States, China, India ,Russia. The need for an economic unity became the main issue on the European agenda, and the central task of the European Union. The nationalistic traditions of single nation states, their fundamentalism, their egoism had to be overcome, to device concerted actions.

As all empires ,also the European Union needed to expand, to include more and more nation states, even those who were not aware of the original commitment for the idea of a united Europe or never cared for it. Expansion was needed mainly for economic reasons. It could not remain a secret, that such an expansion would lead to conflicts and troubles. Conflicts between the Nord and the South, between the center and periphery, between West and East, between different forms of life, habits.

There are conflicts of economic and of political nature. I will not analyze, only mention them

Fist the political issues. The member states of the European Union are liberal democracies. It is presupposed that all of them, whatever their traditions are, do warrant by stabile institutions civic liberties, human rights, checks and balances, the freedom of the press. All this is presupposed, yet if one among the member states does not honor the freedom of the press, civic liberties, checks and balances and else, there are no means at the disposal of the elected representatives of the Union to make this member country to return to the norms of a liberal democracy.. Only a constitution of the EU could weal such a power, only a reference to the-constitution could declare certain measures of a member state anti-constitutional.

The attempt to device a constitution of the European Union, however, failed. Several nation states rejected it on the ground that to accept a constitution would curtail national sovereignty. Sure, it would, so what? The member of the EU have accepted without much ado the curtailment of their national sovereignty when the agreed not to wage war against each other, and in addition not to have a significant national army at all. To this I would add, that the Union is not a sovereign empire either, since the European Union has no military power of its own. As long as the Union has no constitution, their member states can easily annul all the values and institutions of liberal democracy

The economic issues seem to be more urgent at the present moment, yet this is just a semblance.

European Union needs to maintain its economic weight on the world market, and this is, indeed, also the interest of every member state. Whether the introduction of a common currency, the Euro, was wise, is one question, whether it needs to be defended, is another. Without defending the European currency the Union would suffer a terrible defeat, and it is an open question whether it could survive the at all. Europe without Union , a continent of the “cold beasts” (as Nietzsche expressed himself) of nation states, would be a world shattering catastrophe with unforeseeable consequences

The metaphor “European House” sounds utopian. .A house is a home, where one feels at home, familiar, secure. Everyone who shares a home shares the feeling of homeliness. In order to make sense of the metaphor one need to be at least able to answer the question what does it mean to be an Europeans? I think that if one asked this question of high school children in any European country, especially in countries on the Union’s periphery, the children would not even understand the question. I do not mean that they could not answer it, or only hesitatingly. but that they would not even understand it. Nation is still the greatest integrating force and ideological weapon in most European states, and perhaps in all of them. Pragmatic benefits, like increasing wealth, the broadening of job market, the elimination of visas, border control do matter, but they not provide a significant integrating force.

Everything what I said to this point are of central importance for the understanding of contemporary Hungary.

Among the several political traditions of modern Europe two stand out: republicanism or democracy on the one hand, bonapartism on the other hand. By “bonapartism” I do not refer to I Napoleon, but to a model provided by his example, represented best by III Napoleon ,and in a more extreme version by Mussolini and Franco .For the present Hungarian model the non radical version of –Napoleon III. is the most relevant.

Our current prime minister , better to say, his party, FIDESZ, gained power legally by democratic elections just as Louis Bonaparte once upon a time did...Due to a very problematic electoral law, FIDESZ received two third of the parliamentary votes.. As a result, they can pass just the laws they want, without any resistance, even without any consultation . They use their de facto unconditional power to eliminate all counter powers, or, where this is still not possible, to put their loyal members into their leading positions for nine years.

One and a half years in power, they have already passed a media law which limits substantially the freedom of the press .They centralized information distribution in almost all media. They coined a so -called fundamental law, a constitution, the preamble of which is termed ‘national confession of faith’ and contains among others an utterly right wing interpretation of Hungarian history. They proposed to include in the selfsame fundamental law the criminalization of the Socialist Party, declaring their responsibility e for all the crimes of communism. They nationalized private pension funds . They (that is the state) is about take over the schools hitherto run by local councils, they will determine the curriculum of each subject matter for each of them reintroducing the already defunct Prussian school system shaped on a military model. , They passed a All this and many else boils down to the fever of centralization and concentration of powers, the monopolization the sources of information, the curtailment of the rights of the trade unions and else.

What is the answer to this challenge?

Although the numbers of their true believers begins to dwindle, FIDESZ still enjoys more support than the opposition. They achieve this not just by the monopolization, centralization of the new services and the media in general ,yet also by fundamentalist nationalist propaganda, and by populist ideology, although not populist politics.

FIDESZ controls not only the right wing media, but almost all media in Hungary. There is only one television station and one radio station with offers outbalanced news services. The media is used for character murder, for the attempt at criminalization of the opposition, for outright misinformation.

Institutions of administration, of all the media , yet also cultural, scientific institution are constantly reorganized. This offers the possibility to throw out everyone who does not stand in their line, without giving reasons. The media is almost entirely ‘purified” from “ alien” “un-Hungarian” influence. As a result everyone is afraid, and understandingly so. . Afraid not just from losing a current job but not to get any other .Thus people shut up, look to another direction, they suspect spies everywhere, and perhaps not without reason-

The immense propaganda factory of FIDESZ puts together an ideology using several motives.,

First traditional Hungarian nationalism, characterized by two, seemingly contradictory, features. First: we are the best, second, we are always victimized. Nowadays this tradition is repeated in the following variations. The Union criticizes our wonderful media law, because we are the pioneers, ahead of them, they will soon learn everything from us. We are the greatest, the best. Because they do not understand us, they neglect us. We are the most misunderstood nation on earth. We defend our sovereignty against the rest of Europe (by sovereignty understand: do what we like, without any interference) The banks are our greatest enemies. Or almost the greatest .For the greatest is communism, moreover the followers of communists, the socialists.

It is not difficult to trace the populist elements in the FIDESZ propaganda machine, Yet, as I indicated, their propaganda is populist, their politics is not. Politics, especially, the new tax system, privileges the rich, especially the small but immensely wealthy Hungarian oligarchy.

Racism is one of the most successful weapon of extreme right wing populism. FIDESZ is ,how ever, not a racist party. There is a racist party in Hungary, called Jobbik. FIDESZ loses votes mainly in for the extreme right, the Jobbik. Yet some members of Fidesz, play also out the racist card in order in the competition with the Jobbik, or perhaps because of their conviction.

I described briefly the Hungarian case to show the fragility of the European Union. The Hungarian case is not a metaphor ,rather a warning. If nation states, or at least some nation states which has not done it before, will not look at their own past with strongly critical eye, if they will not even try to see themselves also with the regard of the other, the regard of the neighbor, of the former enemy, European Union will not have a splendid future. Yet I cherish the hopes that the Union will have the capacity to handle its conflicts, to learn how to live well with its problems even without solving them. .Yet, to achieve this, the denizens of European nation states need to understand the question “what does it mean for me to be an European” , and be ready also to answer it