The Club for European Understanding and Communication

may well seem to have a rather monothematic past but even though it bases its principles on European history it is very much an association of the present, for the future, serving a few very real objectives.
Fundamental to our work is our unabashedly openly declared belief that European civilization has contributed the most to global societal evolution. Yes, global warming can and probably should be considered a result of the technological revolution that was started in Europe. But so are democracy, gender equality and an enlightened, humanist view of the world. It may well be that ecological disasters are a direct result of the European drive for progress. But it is not Europe alone that has been polluting the air and the seas for the last one hundred years. But it was Europe that gave the world the concept of freedom of thought and opinion, freedom from political oppression and the right to self-determination.
Rembrandt, van Gogh and Picasso were European. So were Mozart, Beethoven and Debussy. And so were Plato, Augustinus and Kant. These are genuinely European contributions to the world at large; freely offered to the global community of mankind, as much as all other offshoots of European thought, such as the eradication of small-pox and polio. All of this has become part of the world heritage.
On a more conciliatory note it should not remain unmentioned that we do not try to deny the horrors perpetrated by Europeans in the name of European values in Europe and around the world. The conquest of Africa, Latin America, North America, large parts of Asia and Australia, a well as the Holocaust, the Gulag and the Cultural Revolution are bitter examples of European ideologies and ideals having been brutally perverted. But none of these can be said to be uniquely European in the sense that only Europeans could have perpetrated these crimes, whilst the achievements of the European civilization stand alone in the world.
Summing up the above: the Club for European Understanding and Communication is a redoubt for European identity, of pride in the contributions of Europeans to the world`s civilization. It is a haven for friends of Enlightenment and true European values.