(Talking about Europe)

The Dutch government asked the Nexus Institute to organise a series of international conferences on these questions in the second half of 2004 with the participation of leading thinkers and decision-makers. George Steiner’s Nexus lecture ‘The Idea of Europe’ in Tilburg was a kind of prologue to the series. The opening conference, in which international politician and intellectuals took part, was held in The Hague. The participants came from all corners of Europe to attend the debate on the Politics of European Values. It was followed by a closed seminar in Warsaw at which some 70 international politicians, scholars and writers spent two days exchanging ideas about European values, European identity and the future of the European Union. After Warsaw, the next stop was Berlin, for a debate on education and the significance of art, culture and science for cultivating the European model of civilisation. At the Library of Congress in Washington, a debate was held on freedom, democracy and the defence of universal values. The closing conference, at which the conclusions of the previous seminars will be the subject of a public debate, was originally scheduled in The Hague, until it was suggested that this intellectual summit, held during the Dutch EU Presidency, should take place in the city that is the symbol of a Europe that rose from the ashes of war and is also the birthplace of that famous European, Erasmus Roterodamus.In Nexus 40 to 42 essays on the theme have been published.