Slavenka Drakulic Talks About European Identity

Croatian writer and journalist Slavenka Drakulić | Photo: De Balie, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode)
Croatian writer and journalist Slavenka Drakulić | Photo: De Balie, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode)

When national identity becomes important, there is trouble in sight for the community, says the Croatian Author and Journalist Slavenka Drakulic in her interview with the Online-Magazine Europe &Me. The recipient of the 2004 "Leipzig Book Award for European Understanding" misses among Europeans the strong sense of belonging to Europe and points to the growing anti-immigrant atmosphere in Europe and in the EU in the last years. This has to do with fear; fear of the "other". At the moment Europeans are afraid of Muslims but also of the Roma - tomorrow it might be some other ethnic group, a nation or a religion.

Drakulic looks for the reasons behind this fear. Why are Europeans afraid of the "other"? And how is the "other" created? What would really be needed to grow together as a community?

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