1. "What is your current assessment of the 'state' of transatlantic relations?"

It seems to me that transatlantic relations between the US and the EU are in dire need of an authentic dialogue that aims at repairing the bridges of understanding created after World War II but now in dangerous disrepair. A recent headline in EU Observer says it all Americans from Mars, Europeans from Venus. In my opinion the renewed dialogue should take a frank hard look at the relationship in the light of the latest historical events such as the end of the Cold War and the threat of a new insidious enemy for Western Civilization: global terrorism. Which is to say, we must envision the future and analyze carefully what is the global role and mission of the West in the creation of such a future. To do that we need to know first what is the authentic identity of Western Civilization, what are its historical universally applicable ideals, how can they be implemented within a fresh new political paradigm that places less emphasis on Machiavellian issues of power, prestige and cultural chauvinism, and more on questions of global distributive justice. We need to go back to the future to know where we are in the present. To do so we need a synthesis of imagination and rationality.

2. "Do you think that the next decade will bring positive news in the two 'historical' pillars of the US-EU relations: security and trade?"

In my opinion, the news will be positive for the EU and the US only if it is positive for the entire world. Pope Paul the VI used to say that "if you want peace work for justice." Security is an outcome of authentic peace rather than the hard raw power of one's armies. We must envision trading practices wherein everybody wins, not just the rich and the powerful. We must envision borders not as barriers behind which the West protects its wealth and security but as porous skin separating the inner from the outer and through which the political organism breathes and stays alive. As Martin Luther King used to aptly put it: if there is no justice for one single human being there will be no justice for anybody. History teaches that to build fortresses is to invite the ones on the outside to assault them and attempt to destroy them. Fortresses provide only pseudo security and pseudo peace. The Romans used to say that if you want peace prepare for war. And they were always at war. Gandhi's suggestion is a bit wiser: ally yourself with the best in your enemy and thus you may hope to dialogue with him and win him over. Which is no say that comes a time when values have to be defended and protected.

3. "Being the two richest and most democratic areas on the planet, do you think that both the EU and the US societies face a special responsibility regarding globalization on the
one hand; and on the other hand, do you think that they will face a growing number of similar challenges in their way towards the next decades? Should the transatlantic relationship be improved?"

I would not have joined it if that were not the case. In a democracy the whole purpose of bringing people together from various spheres of society is so that the people can find their voice. If the politicians are wise (no matter what their age),then they will listen to that voice, to the common sense of the people and respect it. Fresh new ideas always proceed from the bottom up, from the people to the leadership. When they proceed from the top down you have a bureaucracy falsely assuming that it knows best and that it can dictate to the people. That is like putting the cart before the horse. It has happened repeatedly within Western history, always with disastrous consequences. In Italy, for example after the political unification of the country was accomplished one of its architects (Cavour) proclaimed that "now that we have made Italy, we need to make the Italians." Santayana improved on Karl Marx's dictum that "those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it" by adding "and the second time as a farse."

4. Is the ‘people-to-people’ cooperation able to open new fields of constructive US-EU cooperation in the coming years? In which way?

As I mentioned above, that is the only way to arrive at a democratic consensus. People must be left free to come together and imagine new fresh global political and cultural paradigms for the 21st century and beyond. Politicians and academics should acquire a modicum of humility and conceive of their role as that of good listeners before choosing and implementing the political structures that best fit a people in a particular historical situation. The United States, for example, right from its origins has been a country with an incredible amount of cultural diversity: a people of peoples and nations, so to speak. So where is the unity proclaimed on its currency ("e pluribus unum") to be found? I would suggest that it will be found in the ideals spelled out in its Constitution which have to do with universal and inalienable principles of freedom, brotherhood, equality under the fatherhood of God. For indeed, to talk of brotherhood without fatherhood is to render the other two ideals moot, it is to run the risk of confusing license for freedom, and self-interest for the common good. A people need much more than a common bank around which to unite and acquire a cultural identity. They need a vision and that vision ought to be spelled out in a Constitution and that Constitution ought to emphasize cultural and spiritual realities, not mere political and commercial considerations.

5. Being the two richest and most democratic areas on the planet, do you think that both the EU and the US societies face a special responsibility regarding globalization on the one hand; and on the other hand, do you think that they will face a growing number of similar challenges in their way towards the next decades?

This question is intimately related to the first one in the sense that the more the power and the privilege of an individual and a nation the more the responsibility to insure a more fair and just world. Power always implies responsibility. Power without responsibility is a formula for the return to the barbarism of "might is right." That is a great temptation within Western Civilization (succumbed to only three years ago in Kosovo), and not to resist and oppose it means that the past disasters will be repeated in the future. So I would say that the common challenge of the EU and the US will be that of creating a more just world so that by the year 2020 we will not have a world where for every rich person (1 billion; the plugged in "fast society") there will be 7 poor on the edge of subsistence (7 billion; the slow society), as some sociologists and economists have predicted, if present trends continue. That kind of scenario will not insure either peace or security.

6. Beyond treaties, organizations, common interests, ... the cooperation between Europeans and Americans is, in the end, a matter of people cooperating with people (politicians, civil servants, businessmen, executives, professors, activists,). How do you assess this 'human factor' today? Should it be improved?

It can be improved in the sense that it is exactly the human that should be emphasized rather than the so called "objectively scientific." For example, one hears of :market forces as if they were impersonal objective forces of Nature, a sort of demiurge shaping the destiny of mankind. But it is Man who has devised and implemented marked forces. There is a human factor involved in market oriented economic formulas and usually ignored: it is sheer human greed that makes a CEO run with million of dollars and deprive his employees of their pensions. As a humanist I see a disproportionate amount of emphasis on military, scientific, economic issues (having to do with the obtaining and retention of power) at the expense of issues of "LeitKultur," which ought to be the guinding principles as we struggle with various crisis: the environmental degradation, the growing gap between rich and poor, ethical failures of all kinds in all sectors of society. This undue emphasis on the mere pragmatic and useful is a disturbing trend that can be perceived in the on-line ongoing debate on the future of Europe and various other forums. Emphasizing cultural issues means at the very least that we begin turning on its head the assumption that something is true because it is useful. It should be useful because it is true. Moreover, since Man creates cultural artifacts and his/her own history, in fact Vico teaches us that Man is his own history, that means that even objective science has a history made by Man and can therefore be studied and analyzed in a humanistic mode. A challenge that I see for Western culture as a whole (on both sides of the Atlantic) is the recovery of humanistic modes of thinking. Here again, imagination and reason need to be synthesized after the historical imagination is recovered.