We are Europe! Manifesto for re-building Europe.

Re-building Europe? Foto: A. Nydahl.

Varför tiger de intellektuella? Ja, frågan ser man ofta, i stort och i smått. Därför vill jag gärna visa er ett upprop från europeiska intellektuella som jag inte till 100% skulle instämma i, men som är synnerligen intressant. Så här börjar det:

"A European Year of Volunteering for Everyone – for taxi drivers and theologians, for workers and the workless, for managers and musicians, for teachers and trainees, for sculptors and sous-chefs, for supreme court judges and senior citizens, for men and women – as a response to the euro crisis! The young people of Europe may be better educated than ever before but they still feel powerless in the face of the looming bankruptcy of nation-states and the terminal decline of labor markets. Every fourth European under the age of 25 is unemployed. In the many places where disenfranchised young people have set up camp and made public protests they are clamoring for social justice. Wherever such camps are – in Spain, Portugal, the countries of North Africa, American cities or Moscow – this demand is being made with great force and fervor. Anger is mounting over a political system that rescues banks with eye-watering mountains of debt but squanders the future of young people in the process. But how much hope can be held out for a Europe with a steadily ageing population?"

Hela manifestet finns här. Och där kan du också se vem som tagit initiativet och vem som undertecknat det. Det rör sig om en minst sagt respektabel grupp människor. Att jag genast fann Adam Michnik, Herta Müller, Zygmunt Bauman och Imre Kertész bland de tidiga undertecknarna avgjorde saken.