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Supporters of the European project often speak of a core set of European “values” for which that project stands.

At the time when the European Union is threatened from inside and outside, the agenda is particularly tempting. It raises the EU by an entity that simply follows its own interests as any state or group of other states and makes it empowering norms that can, with credibility, be said to make the world a better place.

It shouldn't be that these people who talk about European values, this idea sounded a little Hungarian. She says international politics is a clash of civilizations, on which the blame is addressed on cultural lines.

But do European values exist in a sense of meaning? In order to consider European values, they must on one side be common to Europeans and to the other, to be marked by people's values in other parts of the world.

Belief in European Values has fallen after EU's inaction to stop the loss of immigrant lives in the Mediterranean Sea

But they are more than some abstract universal values that are widely divided among all people. There could be something like the Western “value” (although, of course, this is the same idea since the clash of civilizations). However, as soon as you try to become more precise and clearly identify the European values, the differences within Europe that are, among Europeans, begin to become as obvious as the differences between Europe and the rest of the world.

Beyond its rhetoric, the EU is doing very little to uphold international order and law outside its borders.

When people talk about European values,” they usually think of the first two things, a set of values that Europeans allegedly believe collectively, and secondly, a set of values that are embedded in institutional structures and EU policies are worth the EU. It is far from clear whether these two go together.

Europeans can collectively believe in democracy, for example. But, thanks to the fact that they are not the only ones who share this belief, it is still hard to assume that democracy is specifically worth the Europeans, given that one of the main criticisms of the EU is that it acts undemocraticly.

In order for the idea of European values to be understood, Europeans must undoubtedly engage collectively in them in a way that transcends rhetoric. In other words, Europeans have to live with these values rather than just promote them.

The EU's founding abandoned says that “this project is founded on values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights.” But the bloc is quite inconsistent in the way it promotes these values beyond its external borders.

The EU promoted democracy, human rights and rule of order and law to its neighbours as it expanded. But does the EU promote democracy and human dignity when it deals with authoritarian regimes and turns refugees back to their countries, or when it allows them to die in the Mediterranean Sea?

The most obedient value can be said to be European is rule of order and law. After all, the EU is nothing more than a set of rules and making rules is what the EU does. Yet, this too is problematic.

Beyond its mere rhetoric, the EU has done very little to try to support rule of order and international law outside its borders. In one of the greatest threats to the order and international law, the invasion that is taking China to the islands in the South and Eastern China Sea, the EU is talking about the <x0-neutral principle” but it's completely lacking in practice. France has urged the EU to take care of freedom of navigational operations to do what it said, in other words, but has received no support. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom, which is in the process of coming out of the EU, and the United States is actually taking action guaranteeing rule of law in Asia.

Brussels has enabled the idea of Euro-value “” to justify taking strong action against Poland and Hungary for violating the order and internal law. The problem is that the EU earlier used the same rhetoric to strengthen the eurozone fiscal rules and temporary quotas for refugees, thus discrediting it.

It turns out that the EU's insistence on order and law is not a European idea, but in fact a German. And that is a large part of the EU's internal problems.

Much of the conflict within the EU concerns resistance to the first rules as coming from Berlin as an attempt to affect the sovereignty of member states. This was made clear during the European crisis, which can be seen as a battle between the German rule-based effort and France with southern countries based on discretion.

In practice, even rule of order and law turned out to divide Europeans as much as brought them together. It may be a value in which many pro-Europeans believe, but which does not make it as distinctive as European value and as other European values does not mean that all Europeans support it. /Periscope