Colloquy

"Promoting intercultural dialogue: issues and perspectives of the Council of Europe"

Lisbon, 22 – 24 June 2007

Speech by Mr Pierre Corneloup, rapporteur of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, on intercultural and inter-religious dialogue

Mr President,

Deputy Secretary General,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great honour to find myself here in Lisbon among so many distinguished people who have all, through their work, made an effective contribution to the debate on the promotion of intercultural and, if I may say so - for this is the approach the Congress wanted to pursue - inter-religious dialogue.

First of all, I should like to congratulate the Deputy Secretary General and the Director General for channelling the Council of Europe's work in the promising direction of intercultural dialogue and taking the initiative of holding this colloquy with a view to a White Paper, which will, I am sure, be a landmark in our work in this field.

The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities broached this issue early on.  As far back as 2004, in a report commissioned from one of our experts, we tried to identify the difficulties local authorities encountered in managing cultural and religious diversity.

Indeed, it is interesting to note that, at the very time when we were looking for practical means of ensuring cultural diversity at local level, we were confronted, first of all, with the difficulties our local authorities had in managing what could be described as religious and cultural cohabitation.  This cohabitation is so complex and, indeed, conflict-ridden that we, as local authorities, need to master these phenomena and, before we can do that, we must discover and familiarise ourselves with them.  This approach was the start of our efforts and provided the incentive to go much further - as we did a few months later, at our session in May/June 2005, by adopting the Hunt-Fäldt report, along with a resolution and recommendation that are as topical as ever.

As you know, Director General, the Congress wanted to build on the work it had already done by making an effective contribution to the Council of Europe White Paper.

Accordingly, in November 2006 I myself hosted an international colloquy in my town of Montchanin, at which we drew up 12 key principles for intercultural and inter-religious dialogue for local authorities, which will provide support for the White Paper's approach.

Moreover, your department is processing a questionnaire sent to European local authorities, which should provide a sound basis for work on the role our authorities can play in this respect.

Allow me, at the start of this conference, to say a few words about where we stand at present in the Congress, so as to make things clear from the outset.

We in the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities are convinced - at least this is what emerges from the work of our Committee on Culture and Education - that local authorities need to become aware of the growing part paid by religions in processes whereby identities are forged, both individually and collectively.  Indeed, it is the cultural and social dimension of religions that makes it necessary for our authorities to intervene, and provides the justification for doing so.

The paradox of inter-religious dialogue, where local authorities are concerned, is that in our democracies, where the religious dimension is a matter of freedom of conscience, it is not for the authorities to lead this dialogue.  They may neither organise it nor lay down rules, precisely because of the principles of secularism, subsidiarity and religious autonomy.

And yet - and this is the crux of the paradox - local authorities must steer a delicate course between indifference and interference.

That is what makes the exercise so difficult, and this is our guiding principle when it comes to the public organisation of dialogue.

By focusing our efforts on knowledge, recognition and confidence, we want to ensure that religions are perceived not as a problem but as an asset, the aim being to involve them in the democratic management of pluralism.

We are convinced that, here as elsewhere, mutual knowledge, recognition of differences and the encouragement of dialogue among the representatives of the various religions will help to ease tension in our cities and suburbs.

This is the opposite approach to creating ghettos: it is an approach based on openness, the very approach that underpins democratic societies.

I do not want to go into greater detail about the tricky managerial job facing local authorities, which is often more akin to sewing and embroidery than to brickwork.  I shall have occasion to elaborate on these ideas in a workshop.

But I should like, in conclusion, to sum up our Congress's approach by outlining the central thrust of our work: interculturalism must gradually replace multiculturalism, and we are firmly convinced that, by the same token, an inter-religious society must prevail over a multi-religious one. 

In a spirit of deliberate neutrality, local authorities believe that inter-religious dialogue must appeal to reason and not to faith, to knowledge and not to belief.  Allow me to refer here to the history of my own country and talk about what we in France call "laïcité", or secularism, a concept which is, I know, difficult to translate and indeed to understand for people who are not French.  Yet this secular approach paves the way for genuine neutrality on the part of the State, which is no obstacle to the organisation of religions in a reasonable manner or indeed to inter-religious dialogue in the future.

You will understand that I am not, of course, saying this out of parochialism, but rather with a view to enabling models that have proved their worth to be tried out everywhere.

Intercultural, multicultural, inter-religious, multi-religious - the similarity of these concepts and the difficulty, at times, of distinguishing between them mean we must ensure the utmost political clarity and rigorously assign roles. The future of our communities and of our desire to live together with due respect all round is at stake.

That is the message I wanted to put across in Lisbon today on behalf of the Council of Europe Congress of Local and Regional Authorities.  I know that I shall find sympathetic ears, and mentalities that, by nature and out of a commitment, are in favour of dialogue.  I look forward to a most fruitful discussion.

Thank you.