The night I became European

I remember the eve of Portuguese entry into the EU (EEC, at the time). It was 31 December 1985, and I was with a couple of friends celebrating New Year’s in a disco, down in the Algarve – a favourite place in the south of Portugal for five million Europeans each summer. We came out of the disco at around four o’clock in the morning and I suddenly found myself saying: “From this day on we are different – we are Europeans.” My friends laughed at me and someone asked: “Well, have you changed? What does it feel like to be a European?”

Over the next few days I kept thinking about this exchange. In my idealistic, perhaps naive view, to be European meant that, some time in the future, I might enjoy the same social security system as the Swedish, the same fiscal system as the Germans, the quality of the consumers’ market which the French have; the healthcare of the Danish, Italian perfectionism in the arts, fashion or design industry and maybe some of the Spanish joy of living.

Being European – ‘simply the best’?

Being European would mean, then, that you could expect to share the best of everyone. An enlarged political, social and economic area where you would be able to demand, at all times, as in the words of the Tina Turner song, “simply the best” – in human rights legislation, protection of the environment, welfare system, fair trade and economic competition.

Furthermore, for someone born in a country which had lived under dictatorship for 48 years, until 1974 – whose regime used to say, “we are proudly alone” – Europe meant freedom for ever. It meant that I would no longer be an object of suspicion merely because I wanted to study or work abroad, or just go and see the Prado in Madrid. It meant that from then on I would carry a passport where, alongside the name of Portugal, was printed the magic words European Union – which spelt out the fact that, even against my own government, I would no longer be alone.

Measuring freedom at the borders

For a journalist like me, who has travelled extensively throughout the Third World, nothing can be more symbolic of freedom than this idea of a united space of 15 nations where you share exactly the same rights as the natives of each of those 15 countries, and where you can travel from one to another without even showing your passport. You have to have experienced an African border to realize what this means in terms of a total revolution in the minds of the local authorities.

As a teacher I’ve always stressed that the degree of freedom a country enjoys is something you can tell simply by observing the way they treat people on their borders. The more suspicious they are of you, the more papers and bureaucracy they demand: the more time they make you spend at the frontiers, the less freedom they enjoy and tolerate.

“What’s the purpose of your visit?” It’s a simple, classic, question that always makes me nervous and itching to reply: “And what’s the purpose of that question – do you expect a chap to answer that he’s coming to shoot your President?” Almost every year, for example, I cross the border from Algeciras, in Spain, to Ceuta, in Morocco. Each trip takes no less than two, three hours, depending on the “backshish” you’re willing to slip the policemen.

Last time I decided that, since all my papers were legal and in order, I was not going to pay a penny for the privilege of entering Morocco. This decision cost me four hours, during which time it was forcibly brought home to me that they were the power in the land, and I was in their hands. When I finally got clearance, I took my revenge. I turned to the chief of the guards and told him: “You think I asked you for permission to enter Morocco? Well, you’re wrong. It’s Morocco which is asking to enter the European Union, to which I already belong. And do you know the first thing that will go if Morocco is accepted into Europe? It’s you, your job and your border. Get that into your head.”

You’ll never walk alone

Well, 16 years have passed since the dawn of our first day in Europe. Europe has brought Portugal some good things and some things that are hard to accept, like the prohibition against eating “jaquimzinhos” – a baby fish that doesn’t reach the minimum size Brussels allows for fishing – or the return to school at the beginning of September, while it’s still summer around here.

In such matters, I envy and admire the Spanish, who haven’t given up a single habit under pressure from Europe: they go on with the “siesta”; they continue to have dinner at 22.30; they eat all kinds of baby fish; bullfights are still the national premier event. Which is precisely my idea of Europe: to defend and protect the differences that make Europe such a rich and multicultural space, while accepting common laws to govern us in our common problems and sharing what we have decided, in common, to be best practice.

In this 16 years, Europe made a tremendous contribution to help Portugal fill the gap, in terms of economic and social development, which separates us from the great majority of our partners in the Union. Anyone with a memory can easily tell what enormous changes have been achieved and how the lives of the common people have improved since then – although, regrettably, the number of Mercedes and BMWs in the streets clearly indicates that not all the money received from Brussels went where it was supposed to go.

It is also true that the free market has allowed us to be swallowed up by Spain in many areas from banking to agriculture: patriots fear; consumers applaud. But above all, the final outcome of these years in Europe is a change of mentality. From “proudly alone” to “you’ll never walk alone” – both for good and bad.

The true People’s Revolution

Whatever Europe decides to be in the future which lies ahead, no matter how many countries become part of it, and despite the tremendous difficulties I imagine that it will take to govern this entity, I think that never in the history of mankind has such a revolutionary ideal been attempted. To bring together a whole continent whose destiny seemed to lie only in disputes and war (just look at the former Yugoslavia...); to make everyone bury their differences and to try to build, instead, a common government founded in a common law representing the best of our heritage – that is the most visionary project politics has ever offered.

Never, since the Roman Empire, have we had this notion that someone living in Sweden has the same rights as someone living in Portugal, in Greece or in Ireland. Here’s the true People’s Revolution: we’re no longer subjects, we’re Europeans.