On January 31, at the “Dereta” space, a panel discussion titled “Challenges of the Reception of Liberal Values” was held as the first event in 2024 organized by the Foundation for Liberal Public Policy under the “Wave of Freedom” program, in cooperation with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for the Western Balkans.
The event was moderated by Danijel Pantić, LL.M., with Dr. Dragan Lakićević as the speaker. In the opening session, Mr. Pantić briefly emphasized the importance of liberal principles within the functioning of the EU, noting that “Liberals in the European Parliament agree on adhering to four key principles: freedom, responsibility, solidarity, and the European path.”
Dragan Lakićević, a professor of philosophy, outlined the historical conditions that favored the rise of liberalism. “The idea of liberalism emerged from the distinct characteristics of European civilization, particularly in Western Europe. Woven into this tradition of thought and action are the ancient Greek concept of rationality; the tradition of Roman law, which persisted throughout the Middle Ages, especially in separating the concept of governance from ownership; the value of spiritual freedom stemming from the conflict between spiritual and secular power; and the existence of free cities with their own autonomy as well as free universities, in whose activities authorities could not intervene at will,” Lakićević said, adding: “Without these prerequisites, it would not have been possible in the second half of the 17th century to establish the first institutional forms of social interaction in which individual, or subjective, rights of citizens became the foundation of the legal order. The first states to precisely formulate these principles and apply them to social organization were the Netherlands and England. The carriers of this movement were the class of lawyers, merchants, and bankers—in other words, representatives of the emerging middle class who opposed feudal privileges and paternalism.”
As the speaker highlighted, these topics are not merely a matter of the past, but also of the present, especially for societies suffering from chronic lawlessness, omnipotent power over which citizens have no control, and where the basic principles of freedom of speech, press, and media remain in a rudimentary form.
The second part of the lecture was dedicated to the American Revolution, initiated by liberal-minded lawyers opposing the violation of fundamental natural rights by the English Parliament, which affected the inhabitants of the colonies. “They refused to abide by the decisions of a Parliament in which they were not represented, even though they paid taxes and were formally subjects of the Crown. The violation of fundamental human rights, which they considered inviolable and supreme, gave them the right to rebel. During the revolution, the ‘Declaration of Independence’ was drafted, in which Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin explicitly listed those fundamental rights of the individual, citing John Locke.”
The U.S. Constitution, adopted fifteen years later, would dedicate its first ten amendments to these rights, which subsequently became the foundation of law across Western European nations.