Biography

Dr. Lieve Fransen has been the director responsible for ‘Europe 2020: Social Policies in Directorate-General Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion of the European Commission’ since November 2011. She has devoted herself to promoting the values of social justice and solidarity. Dr. Fransen has had a distinguished career in international public health, which includes a role as Public Health Advisor to the Ministry of Health in Mozambique, Kenya, Rwanda and the Cape Verde Islands. In addition to this, Dr. Fransen was Task Manager of a research program on pregnant women and new-born babies in Rwanda and was also a Director of a research program on sexual and reproductive health in Kenya and at the Tropical Institute in Antwerp. Dr. Fransen is a medical doctor with a PhD in Social Policies.

EU Multiculturalism and Cultural Diplomacy

A Lecture by Dr. Lieve Fransen, MD, PhD; Director, European Commission, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion

Thank you very much. Good afternoon everybody. This is the first time I have come in touch with this institute so thanks for the invitation. I was asked to make a key notes speech, so this is what I prepared but I have the impression there is more interest in having interaction so maybe I’ll try to keep my presentation a bit shorter than I have expected because this is maybe my misunderstanding.

First of all I would like to share some points that I prepared. In your brochure here is also interesting you referred to definitions of cultural diplomacy as the exchanging of ideas and information, values and with the intention of fostering mutual understanding. Behind all of this is the object of having a more peaceful world at ease with itself and for each of us to live as we chose. I think it is useful to come back to this because I have the impression sometimes that under cultural diplomacy and multiculturalism we discuss a lot of different things anyway. It’s interesting to see how everybody approaches it from different levels, from identity nation’s state from art from economic. So I will of course I have my own interpretation form different prospective. I think it’s important that we recognize also that over centuries people have tried to organize themselves and their community to avoid conflicts between different people specifically with different identities - to organize not only a fear society but also institutions and legal aspects in that context. I would like to share a few personal comments, experiences and as well as my professional experience. I’ve always been very convinced that we have learned lived work thrived from early childhood in a multicultural society and I’ve been very strongly educated from the perspective that each men and women are equal and should be respected as equal. And maybe it is also important when we talk about cultural diplomacy to also go back and to how education and schooling can play a very important rule and has a very different impact in different societies in a way. I’m also convinced not only from a personal perspective but also form a European perspective that Europe is a very well place to lead all of the efforts not only in Europe but also globally because we have learned in Europe through centuries of struggle war and enlightenment how human right multilateral and multicultural ideas really emerge and how we develop institutions to try to defend, protect and step by step move forward, sometimes little steps backward and two step forward. These ideas and values have evolved in Europe but they are very often questioned by some. The debates that are going on for the moment around the election in Europe, India, Cairo show very much how these values are really not secured and they have to be protected over and over again.

It is not something that we acquire and then we can live peacefully ever after. I think this is also a lesson that Europe learned and keeps learning. The extreme situation we are confronted with at the moment for example in Nigeria or in first legislation against homosexuals in Uganda or other countries in Africa, also show again how intolerance and discrimination is increasing in some areas and some continent, some countries or some population. All of this  to me, even if we have the impression sometimes there’s evolution in the right direction and institutions and legislation in the right direction, this clash is very often routed in a very inherently feeling that some people feel and think they are superior above others and that can be race, gender, culture, identity and range of identities. Now I think is important, I have also experienced personally in range of experiences I’ve been working in Africa  I worked for example in Mozambique where there was a real attempt to create a real multicultural respect for different races, ethnicities, tribes and so on. At the same time next door there was South Africa where there was a legislation to legislative discrimination with the apartheid regime. And they were just neighbors. But you can see how, I mean I lived also how the extreme differences were created among these populations in a way that there were very close neighbors and could have lived well together. I’ve seen people brutally killed in Mozambique because they were hiding or getting away from the  apartheid regime in Africa. I’ve also lived through genocide in Ruanda which is again an example of extreme rejection of the other and incapacity of protecting the other in a way under these brutal situations. I’ve also had a funny experience, I was introduced the 9th of may the day Europe in China in Shanghai exhibition and there was standing looking at the parade of European member state presenting their different culture and representations and the mere of shanghai was standing next to me and he said: “Well is very interesting to look at you minorities in Europe like this”.

I’ve never heard member states being referred to as minorities actually but that’s how the Chinese look at all of this countries representatives. Finally also at the personal level I was married to an Afro-American jazz musician and I’m sharing that with you because my beloved husband died in the meantime, that’s why I said that I was married, but for 30 years I really lived in a way through the discrimination in a different way. When I was alone travelling as a woman, very often I was treated very differently from travelling with him. Although he expected this experience to be much easier because he was born black any way, I didn’t except very easily because I saw the difference to such an extreme. We were refused to book into hotels in Egypt and in New York and that was only in the 80s. In the meantime the positive side of this is of course that in the mean time in America we have Obama as president, something that the civil right movement and my husband included would have never believed that it would have happened in their lifetime. So in a way for me the positive side of the story is that there is hope and things can change actually and sometimes faster than we believe if the right efforts are being put in the direction. So I have lived as a cultural diplomatic in a way, my personal experience but also in a professional experience, I have practiced Jewish politics and institutional organized diplomacy in a multicultural way. Of course working in the EU union for more than 20 years you work all the time with different culture, attitude identities and personally I always seen as a richness, I would have never wanted something else but you also see the difficulties you see in one way I see young generation are really embracing diversity in Europe and globally. On the other hand I also see still a lot of rejection of the other, including on what you referred to about the Roma population, Bulgarian, this old discussion is going way beyond the pure economic situations and what they called the benefit tourism and so on.

There’s still a lot of that and I have the impression that really more need to be done to create peace and citizenship also in Europe. There’s no real European citizenship, there’s no real European identity being developed. When I was working on cultural diplomacy when I was the director of representations in Europe we developed a lot, for example for the elections coming up in a few days and some of the problems developed where really offensives for some countries and not for other. And that sensitivity is not really being developed very well within the institutions and within the cultural worked is being done or even the political work has being done. One good example for the moment is that there was a Danish video, I don’t know if some of you have seen the Danish video for the elections to try to mobilize to go to the election. It went quite viral but there was seen by most of the other countries, France and the UK, as very offensive, and so it was taken off. And there again the sensitivity and the perception is so different sometimes.

I want to share also with you, I see we have some paper from the Netherlands, but I recently read a very interesting report I found about that discusses the political debate surrounding the national identity in the Netherlands. I mean it is against the bankruptcy of a growing public anxiety about immigrants and I’m taking this because this is a report really very well studied but I don’t want to pinpoint the Netherlands as separate of any other country because a lot of that is also happening in my own country in Belgium. But the report finds that new integration strategies that were advanced by the Dutch government since the official rejection of multiculturalism in 2004 pushes the notion of cultural citizenships. The idea that being Dutch means adhering to certain sets of cultural and social norms and places the owner on the minority to fit in the existing majority. The turn away from multiculturalism is reflected in policies that deny admission to prospective immigrants who fail in compulsory civic integration: exams and limit social system to non-Dutch speakers. We see this also in several other countries. It’s an interesting choice that it has been made, maybe is a necessary choice for while but I question but also the writer question in the report that choice had been made. It also shows very clearly in the report how the anti-immigrant political retiring in Dutch society is very polarized and you have also ruled part of the society that sees the multiculturalism as a very positive gain for the society. So you have both views very much. The choice that it has been made by national government is sometimes very difficult to change at a certain stage but the author comes to conclusion basically that it could also choose a more open notion of a national identity based on a shared interest and experiences rather than the minority have to adapt to majority. There are choices there are very interesting to have debate on.

There’s another report or book that I’ve recently read about migration and how much is enough of the migration. And there also the debate are interesting to see these reports, a debate should also taken up much more I believe in the public domain to really make the debate evolve because for the moment we have quite a lot of division. Sometimes obscure decisions that had been taken. I believe that the EU is really placed in a very privileged position with the experience of integration political and economically also to look further into the cultural integration with a wild still respecting the diversity as the ambassador was speaking about. It is not about harmonizing cultures or making everybody the same but it is how do we create an identity that respects the other and integrate without harmonizing necessarily. I see this as a real challenge for Europe but also for the world. Trough the cultural diplomacy experiences Europe ha s worked a lot on Erasmus Leonardo Da Vinci exchanging programs for academics young people, exchanging vocationally education extended now also to Africa, Asia. These programs are very positive I think by now extremely young people benefit from Erasmus program. But all of this, maybe some of you here, it is interesting, but is not enough to really create the citizen, European identity I believe. So I’m going to cut a few things short here.

In my personal opinion I really think that cultural public diplomacy in general can become a very much stronger part of Europe. Some of us fathers creating Europe thought that culture should have been the beginning. I think that culture and the development of cultural diplomacy identity is very critical, but important but very slow process so I don’t think we would have been where we are if we had started with culture probably. So this was a bit of opportunistic choice I believe but that doesn’t mean that it is not important. For the moment what I hear very often as cultural diplomacy by the member states also very interesting even in my own country we have plenty of cultural diplomacy. I still don’t see very much what the European identity is that we bring abroad and the values that are going with this. There is a lot of work to be done in that area beyond what we see since centuries.

I think when I was invited to come here I was a little bit surprised but on the other hand I really looked forward to had some further exchange and to learn also from what this institute and you are doing because I strongly believe in this as the personal level but also in my professional task for the moment I’m in charge of social policy. For the moment we focus very much on the changes needed in the social welfare state within very aging society and the crisis situation of course. But on the other end I believe that there is also in that context also much more cultural exchange and diplomacy could be done also on the context internally in member state also for integration inclusion while still respecting other people dignity and identities.

I want to finish with something that always keeps me focusing on the dilemma that we confronted with from the philosopher Popper, there are a lot of people that don’t like this philosopher very much but I think on the cultural aspect and identity he has written something that keeps me on track. He says we have to live in part in a specific culture or cultures with their local restrictions which serve to give us a specific character and identity while in part we live in this wider liberal culture of an open society, this no mean task to construct self a social identity which can handle this issue, but this is the task we should be able to accomplish and in which it is important that we get as much assistance as possible from the culture in which we are socialized. So all of this is to highlight one of the most important tasks I believe we are confronted with worldwide but is I hope Europe will further be able to lead on, and that to reconstruct our institutions, culture and indeed are selves so that we can thrive within an open society. I believe that for culture is something very important very close to identity but it is not fixed it can move be created into something even more conducive for a civil society and a peace society.