On October 18, the first Ukrainian-language edition of Jeff Fontaine’s book Deep Roots was presented.
The event was organized by the Democratic Initiatives Support Foundation and the Ukrainian Church of Christians of Evangelical Faith.
The book focuses on the personality and ideas of Robert Schuman, one of the founding fathers of the EU, and the ideological foundations on which the European community was built.
Jeff Fontaine, author, director of the Robert Schuman Center for European Studies, formerly director of the Christian international program Youth With A Mission Europe, speaking to the guests, emphasized that Europeans have begun to forget their roots.
“If Europe is an oak tree, then modern society often sees only acorns from it, but spoils the roots,” compares Fontaine.
“The European Union was built on Christian values, which were designed to create a good for all and reject national selfishness. Now we see a turn towards ultra-liberal values, a consumerist way of life, extreme individualism. There is less and less space left for the traditional family, for those spiritual moments that its founders tried to put in the basis of the EU. Today, the EU looks less and less like Schumann’s Europe, and therefore, if it wants to continue successfully, it must turn to the fundamentals, to the roots,” the author of the book emphasized.