For a year now, a group of about ten young urban professionals have been gathering to converse in a Helsinki room.      They have not been talking about money, but about Europe. But why? They have not been commissioned to make a report by the Finnish foreign ministry, they do not represent the interests of business life, and they have not been paid for their conversation.      No one has even asked them their opinion.      They have decided to ponder whether there is a European identity, what unity through diversity might mean, and whether a legal constitution is necessary in a Europe of the individual.      The real task of the meeting, however, is to prepare, amid the chatting, for a great pan-European discussion forum to be held in Helsinki, which is supported by the University of Helsinki. The Helsinki Forum is convened by the sociologist and writer Jari Ehrnrooth and Niilo Kauppi, a docent in political science. Once again, why?      Because the debate on Europe is conducted too much according to the conditions of commercial life, and Europe has not been pondered sufficiently from the point of view of civil society and intellectual culture, the manifesto replies. Is the Helsinki Forum, then, an intellectual rebel movement or merely a talking shop?      Whatever the answer, dozens of independent thinkers from all the countries of Europe will take their seats at the round table.      The conference will be held next September, and will take no heed of the borders of the European Union. The cultural heritage and problematics of the continent will be examined from a broader perspective. It is not yet certain how far east the conference will go; but not even Napoleon knew that.      Borders have always been Europe's problem. Either there have been no clear borders on offer, or there have been too many: they have been in the wrong places, running through villages, towns, city blocks. Or they have been invisible: ethnic, religious, economic. Wavering and explosive border zones which pass through people, too.      Thus there have always been attempts to clarify Europe.      The unification of Europe has always begun from the foot of a wall: the Roman empire needed its wall to keep the barbarians out. During the Cold War, western Europe needed its own iron curtains to keep the communists out (although it was essentially the communists who built them).      Now we speak of globalisation, but at the same time seek tenders from construction companies, customs officials and crime police for the building of a new wall. For we can co-exist, somehow, with Microsoft and Hollywood, but not with the east Asian heroin leagues, the Russian mafias and the poor of Africa.      It is becoming increasingly clear that we do not wish to live in the same world as them.      The writer Veronica Pimenoff is a step ahead of other builders. In her novel Maa ilman vettä ('A world without water', see page 18), she describes the spiritually devastated fortress of Europe, where people talk about exchange rates, process nuclear waste and buy souvenirs.      Beyond the wall lies the fourth world: the criminal organisations of the developing countries, whose members were educated at European universities to build a better world. Now, in turn, they bring their skills to the European markets: they organise prostitution, trade in weapons and drugs and penetrate ever more deeply into the continent's legal economic life.      Perhaps Pimenoff should be invited to join the round-table discussion, for she has convincing arguments concerning the future of Europe. Her novel demonstrates, at least, that the guerrilla warfare between Europe and the fourth world will not end until global solutions begin to be sought, seriously, for poverty, corruption and the structures of violence.      The alternative is to built a watertight wall. For each ant may be a member of some unknown criminal organisation.      Jyrki Kiiskinen      Editor-in-chief    Top of page