Well it is interesting that you should mention the common currency because of course that only applies to 12 of currently 25 members to the EU and it demonstrates one of the themes that I want to get to in a moment that there is in the EU as it now stands unity in diversity. There is a more flexible system now then was the case even 10 – 15 years ago and I think that’s good.

Why did I choose to stay partly because of what I seek as the European agency and there I regarded as a combination of if you like in one had political philosophy, economic philosophy and the way in which are governance structure is organize that is to say unity in diversity that I will get back to. I won’t go back to crusades, I am not qualified but I did do philosophy as an undergraduate at Yale and I know a little bit about that and I will go back to if you like political philosophy and indeed reaffirmation and re-enlightenment. Re-enlightenment is extremely important for me in defining what I see as European identity. And that was essentially the angle of French construction intellectually if you like. We’re talking about human lock and Peter Holm, Voltaire, Montesque and indeed the Descard. And then ultimately triumphed over Hegel and Marks, it is an individualistic political philosophy, it doesn’t preclude by any means the existence of society, and I’ll come back to that in a moment too. But, it is based on individualism and a society that is organized under the rule of law with a degree of tolerance and with a degree of openness of pragmatism and the skepticism that I find particularly congenial. The economic philosophy that corresponds that is also liberal in a sense not the Neal liberal that some of my French friends and many of the French news papers talk about indeed the president of France talks about it this day, which is a slogan. We’re talking about a view of the economy as organized around markets and a search for economic efficiency and dynamism with a degree of social cohesion that is to say efficiency and equity and social cohesion, these are the principles and if you look at the way which the EU and before at the European Economic Community has functioned I think you can see the tread starting from 1957 in the creation of the Common Market, thru to in particular the single market program of 1986 and then on the Monitory Union. You can see the development of this effort to use markets indeed but at the same time to guard what some people call the European social model. Of course there is no single European Social Model we hear a lot about it in the press and it turns out that they are actually talking about may be France in one sentence and in the next sentence may be Germany and in the next paragraph it is up to Sweden and Norway or may be it is Finland so European Social Model is a quite diverse construct but there are these underlined basic principles which I’ve suggested.

Part of this is whatever that is not forbidden is permitted. That’s why it is important. It is quite important for example in regulating the economy, talking about how regulators for example in financial markets run and guide financial markets, if left unregulated financial markets can go up and do some very nasty things. On the other hand if they are over regulated they don’t fulfill the functions that we want. Heart of the European identity in the economic sphere is getting that balance right and I think with the relatively light touch.

To some all of these may seem excessively permissive and there is always a tension for example in civil liberties, we’ve seen that pretty recently in freedom of speech, these issues are now very much at the front of our concerns in particular since 2001 and those tensions have to be resolved in the context of this European system that I’ve been talking about.

The rule of law that I mentioned a moment ago applies both at home and internationally and I think one of the distinctive contributions that Europe can make now is in contrast to the US. It’s preference for multi-layerism and of course that is built on the history of the EU itself since 1957. History of negotiation of compromise of coming of countries coming closer and closer together of not to become a super state but to implement a multilayer approach to economic and political relations. Some of this is recent and it grows out of obviously the European experience of the two great wars and the imposition of a totalitarian ideology on half of the continent. So the enormous human cost and social cost of those events has its mark in every aspect of the organization of the EU.

So, unity and diversity, it operates within countries and across the EU. We are talking about multiple layers of identity.  Identity with cities, with your own neighborhood, loneliness particularly where I live, it is particularly strong on that, people identify very much with their neighborhoods, and then their cities. But then of course in the UK we don’t have regions of any significant kind and the next level up is this nation and beyond that EU. But in France or in Germany one has despartmant, one has the land, German lender which are the regional formation and then again national and super national if you like, EU level.

I think my perspective differs at least from historical characterization that we were just given, this is inclusive not exclusive. That is to say I don’t think the identities that we are talking about now are substantially defined by reference to the other. I see the historical background there but I think this is less important today and what we see then to conclude is an extraordinary in Europe.

EU is an extraordinary experiment which so far thank goodness has been, I think, very successful in pulling sovereignty and that is not seen elsewhere in the world and when Asian countries or the southern and Latin America talk about establishing common currency. They often talk as if you can just do it like that but you can’t do it like that. It rests on a demonstrated will and willingness to pull sovereignty and then I think is the essence of unity and diversity that characterizes the EU. Thank you.

Questions - Answers

Bahadır Kaleağası: I will ask a question to Prof. Portes, why are we discussing all these, European identity, Turkey’s role and so on? Of course developing trends are going on and all these factors so-called flattering the world also with the new economy, internet age, free movement of goods and then communication mobility among peoples, how do the globalization play a role in what we are discussing now?

Short answer to that, very little. I think the degree of globalization to these purposes and many others is grossly exaggerated. We still are world of local communities; we still have tremendous barriers to information flow. We find Diasporas are extremely important in economic life. In a globalize world where everybody knows what everybody else knows where information is transmitted costlessly and all these slogans actually obtained, you wouldn’t have this role of the overseas Chinese or the overseas Indians for that matter and the various other diasporas in economic life that is so important actually in practice because those networks that we discovered we can do a good economic research on this over the past decade. So did little bit myself, these networks of ethnically, religiously, nationally whatever united or related group carry information among themselves. Total contradiction to the idea that everything is globalized, the earth is flat, it is not so and I think certainly in the European context again even within Europe we find that there is a great deal of localism in economic life, I can expand on that in considerable length. So I will ....that there is a lot of evidence for that.

Bahadır Kaleağası: Thank you very much. So there is no village neither global nor a village.

Certainly, it sells well though.

Bahadır Kaleağası: Prof. Portes, would you like to add something may be on the road to be led by the growing energy agenda in Europe’s future energy supply which is creating common fear, common concern, that was one of the questions.

I think I will pass on that because I have no expertise on energy supply at all. I know as much as you do. But I would like to go to the religious question again. I think it is important for not being important. That is to say reference was made before for example to the debate on the constitution, out come of that debate on the constitution was no religion in the constitution, no surprise. You are talking about some pressure in particular from Poland in the Vatican. The Poland in the Vatican, Poland is an important country but it is a small country in the overall EU, at the level of Spain shall we say and the Polish Catholicism sustained itself in good part during the Soviet rule over Poland as a defense mechanism. I suspect that we will find in the next 20 to 30 years that Polish catholysism moderates significantly as it has in elsewhere and indeed degree of participation in actual religious activity Poles there and elsewhere in Europe, the point about contrast with US is very very clear, one reason why I prefer the European identity. It is much more secular now and I think this is very important therefore to go back to Islam versus fanaticism, yes I think really this is not an issue of Islam, the difficulties in relationship between Turkey and the EU have very little to do with religion, they do especially of course since 9/11, it is impossible to underestimate the importance of that phenomena and then the Iraq war which of course tied up. Those two things have been a major set back, no doubt for Turkey in its relations with the EU. We just hope that over time this diminishes but it is a big difficulty.

Bahadır Kaleağası: Thank you for labeling the problem.