In search of Erasmus: Europe without borders

Over the next few weeks, you can join Job on his peregrinations in the new series ‘In search of Erasmus’: a tour of modern-day Europe with Erasmus as a guide. In his second story, ‘Europe without borders’, Job takes us to the pro-European bubble of Cambridge University and the headquarters of the Eurosceptic Front National in Paris.

Concedo nulli: ‘I yield to no one’. Watching the rolling English hills flit by my train window, I imagine a smug-looking train driver painting Erasmus’s motto on the nose of his locomotive. Erasmus takes pride in this motto – which he ‘borrows’ from the Roman god Terminus, the guardian of boundaries in Classical mythology. Erasmus prefers to expand borders rather than bow to them.

In our own times, Erasmus is often seen as a European avant la lettre. As a groundbreaking Renaissance thinker, he advocates individual responsibility and independent thinking, and as such contributes to a new focus in Europe on the individual. His ideal Europe is marked by Christian unity, with its different people joined by a common, reformed Roman Catholic faith. In his own lifetime, with Ottoman influence extending to the very gates of Vienna and Western Christianity divided by the Protestant Reformation, Erasmus hopes that European rulers will ultimately band together rather than fight among themselves.

By 2017, many of the countries in Europe have indeed joined together to form a union, but growing anti-European sentiment has put pressure on this fragile partnership. Last summer, this anti-Europeanism – which seems to haunt Europe like a modern-day Reformation – gained ground during the Brexit referendum. Nevertheless, some have not yet lost faith in a united Europe. Alice Anders, a 21-year-old student at Cambridge University, bravely held out against Brexit with her movement Cambridge for Europe. In the referendum, Cambridge resembled the stubborn Gaul village of the Asterix comics: nearly three-quarters of the town’s citizens voted ‘Remain’, while a majority of the electorate nationwide opted for a Brexit.

Alice is a ‘child of Europe’: born in Germany, raised in France and currently studying French and Spanish in the UK. Although she was not able to cast a vote in the referendum herself, she worked for months to persuade people to vote pro-EU. “I have no problem with people holding a different opinion, but I want to ensure that they can enter into a decent dialogue. Arguments that are based on misinformation do not hold water. That’s why it is important to ensure that people are properly informed before engaging in discussion.”

Although she lost this round – she describes Brexit as ‘surreal’ – Alice will continue to fight for a united Europe: “The roots of this anti-European sentiment lie in a lack of humanity and sense of community in our societies.” Alice remains hopeful. She believes that we can turn the tide by promoting knowledge and science and raising children with values that transcend mere self-interest: “Brexit, the refugee crisis and the rise of right-wing extremism are merely the symptoms of this growing deficiency.”

While much of what Alice says reminds me strongly of Erasmus’s ideas, I also want to talk with a peer who explicitly does not identify as a ‘child of Europe’. That is why I decide to trade the mediaeval cobblestones of Cambridge for the irregular paving of Nanterre. Because this Parisian suburb is where you can find the headquarters of the French political party Front National, where I have arranged to meet with Gaëtan Dussausaye, the 23-year-old Chairman of the party’s youth movement – with 25,000 members the largest of its kind in France.

For over four decades, Front National has represented the far-right, nationalist position in French politics, and for months, its leader Marine Le Pen headed the polls in this year’s presidential election. In less than two days, I have travelled from an academic bastion of Europhilia to the lion’s den of Euroscepticism.

Gaëtan first became attracted to Marine Le Pen’s party as a pupil in secondary school. He was appointed Chairman of FN’s youth movement Front National de la Jeunesse at the age of 19. He is an outspoken critic of totalitarianism in society, which he believes takes two distinct forms: on the one hand, Islam, which forces radical ideas on people; on the other, globalisation, which is promoted by the banking sector and the political elite.

The young Frenchman is also less than enthusiastic about the European Union, although he does believe in the existence of a European culture as a collection of subcultures. And when asked whether, like Alice, he feels a European, he doesn’t beat around the bush: “I feel European because I feel French.” In Gaëtan’s view, being French isn’t defined by ‘the colour of your skin, religion or sexuality’: “It’s the colour of your heart.” And this heart beats faster at the mention of liberty: the freedom to make your own laws, the freedom to guard your own borders. Because Gaëtan makes no bones about this: his ideal France is one surrounded by borders – borders that open to friends, and close to enemies.