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"Boldly European in Times of Crisis"
EKD Representative at the Brussels Religious Leaders Meeting
July 19, 2010
Prelate Bernhard Felmberg, plenipotentiary of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) called upon the countries of the European Union to show greater solidarity and to take more courageous common action in the face of the euro crisis. Speaking at the annual meeting of European religious leaders, Felmberg explained that opportunity lay in truly viewing the "house of Europe" as a common home.
The meeting was also attended by the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, the president of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, as well as selected EU commissioners.
Felmberg warned that without a harmonized European economic policy, a common monetary policy would be doomed to fail. He also stressed the necessity of a greater awareness of Europe as a community with a common fortune and the need for greater boldness when it came to Europe.
Commission President Barroso called the meeting of European religious leaders into being in 2005. The theme of today's meeting, "Combating poverty and social exclusion-an imperative for European governance," adopted the theme of the European Year 2010, which the EKD and its agencies have also been actively working to develop. Barraso emphasized the significance and experience of churches as providers of social services, and how the EU needed the churches as partners in working toward its social goals.
President of European Council, van Rompuy, spoke on how the dialogue with churches and religious communities was not only a legal obligation for the EU but also of particular political concern to those in charge. Prelate Felmberg emphasized that the social market economy, which provides the basis for the new EU strategy through 2020, strongly supports the idea of solidarity. He therefore welcomed the acceptance of the churches' suggestion to include into the strategy a quantifiable goal for the reduction of poverty. He added that it was now not only necessary, however, to fight poverty, but also to provide for the socially disadvantaged to participate in all levels of society.
Prelate Felmberg also alluded to parallels with the Melanchthon Year, which is being celebrated by the EKD in 2010 within the framework of the Luther Decade on the way toward the Reformation Jubilee in 2017: "Melanchthon recognized that a comprehensive view of education was a key to overcoming social upheavals and crises, one which took into account practical and theoretical knowledge." He emphasized that "improved access to education and an integrative understanding of education that does not only lead to economically quantifiable skills are important as means of preventing educational poverty and thus of creating a basis for growth and for broader wealth."
Hanover / Brussels, 19 July 2010
Press Office of the EKD
Reinhard Mawick / Patrick Roger Schnabel