CEC 2030

Tuesday’s industrial action by French train drivers made my journey to Strasbourg a more complicated, but no less pleasant affair. There really is no other way to travel in Europe.

The protracted eight hour journey from London Kings Cross provided the perfect opportunity to read and reflect on Daniel Benjamin’s recent edited collection, Europe 2030.

I was attracted to the book because of its forward looking style and because it carries a similar working title to an ecumenical report due out in December of this year on the future strategic shape and structure of the Conference of European Churches.

Europe 2030 is unlike other studies on EU affairs that tend to focus on either some arcane aspect of integration theory or some specific case study. Instead, Europe 2030 presents a prospective analysis of what the EU will look like in 20 years time.

It presents a grid of analysis informing about future opportunities and challenges which the EU will confront and the trends that are likely to affect its developments. If nothing else the collection of essays enables you to escape the immediacy of the Eurozone debt crisis.

The essays suggest that the EU of 2030 will remains as fragile a system as the EU of today combining as it does different policy modes and conceptions. As we know from current events this obviously makes the EU sensitive to external shocks and stresses.

The essays all appear to suggest that even if European integration goes no further construction will continue apace with a deepening cooperation between some member states in specific policy areas such as defence. The result is likely to be a variable or multi-speed Europe with questions as to the EU’s end point still unanswered. The EU will function even though in theory is should not.

From the perspective of the ecumenical report, CEC 2030, that I’m engaged with others in writing, the essays warn against seeking uniformity where none exists. Just as the European integration process has multiple meanings and generates many trajectories so there are numerous understandings of European ecumenism that symbiotically exist in the same space.

Trying to impose one model of what it means to be CEC in 2030 might not then be the smartest way forward even if it might at first glance be the most logical. What might work on paper might not work in practice.

Seen from this perspective maybe what we need is a looser rather than tighter organisational model - a CEC light - that gives CEC’s constituent parts, its Commissions and networks greater space and autonomy to respond to the challenges of the future. Maybe we should embrace more fully the messiness that might arise from an ecumenism that is multi-speed and variable. After the embarrassing disasters of last month’s CEC Central Committee meeting in Prague this might not be such a bad idea.