On Tuesday, May 13, the European Coalition of Cities Against Racism (ECCAR) had the honour of joining the City of Dudelange for the official launch of the third edition of the "Mois du Respect" (Month of Respect). On this occasion, ECCAR President Benedetto Zacchiroli presented the ECCAR Award to Dudelange (a city of fewer than 50,000 inhabitants), in recognition of its strong and sustained commitment to fighting racism and all forms of discrimination.
As Dudelange grows and transforms, with new neighbourhoods emerging and an increasingly diverse population, the municipality has made respect, tolerance, and social cohesion a clear priority. Through the "Mois du Respect," the city not only raises awareness but actively involves local associations and residents in shaping a shared vision of inclusive urban life. In this article, ECCAR President Benedetto Zacchiroli reflected on Dudelange’s example and the role of small cities in building an anti-racist Europe.
«Je vois ça ! Et toi, qu’est-ce que tu vois ?» (“I see this! And you, what do you see?”)
That simple, disarming question opened the third edition of Dudelange’s Mois du Respect, an initiative that earned the city the ECCAR Award 2024. It’s a question that invites us to truly look, not just see. And during those two days I spent in Luxembourg to present the award to the Mayor and the community, I genuinely tried to do just that.
What I saw was an idea of Europe built with hands. A Europe born from the handcrafted gestures of small municipalities, where nothing is mass-produced and everything carries the mark of care, of faces rather than figures. I saw a form of governance that does not rely on systems alone, but on living relationships. An artisanal way of administering a city: not outdated or inefficient, but intentionally scaled, made with patience, and impossible to industrialize. I saw a small town working each day not to “manage diversity,” but to recognize it as a value. In Dudelange, Luxembourg, I met this version of Europe. A community whose social fabric still bears the marks of internal migration that helped shape the continent: Italians at the end of the 19th century, followed by Portuguese families in more recent decades.
During my visit to the Centre de documentation sur les migrations humaines, I met volunteers committed to preserving photographs, testimonies, and memories so that these stories don’t get lost, but instead become shared heritage. Because a united Europe is also this: women and men who quite literally dug and forged Europe in iron mines and steelworks, through the sweat of their brows. They made integration real long before the European Union existed, and turned it into citizenship. That too is Europe.
Mayor Dan Biancalana, whose surname hints at his Italian heritage, shared how these communities struggled to integrate but ultimately succeeded. So much so that today, they’ve produced a local leadership that descends directly from that journey. In Dudelange, I saw artisans of cohesion. People who work with finesse on relationships, who tend to the fabric of society. Walking through the town and the former “Italian Quarter” (today increasingly known as “Lusitalia”), alongside Thomas Steinmann and the volunteers from the association Inter-Actions, I watched them greet nearly everyone we passed, always with a smile. A beautiful community: self-aware, unpretentious, and sincerely trying.
Even the taxi driver from the City of Luxembourg said it: “Ah, you're going to Dudelange? They really care about diversity and social cohesion there...” I was surprised, and I honestly wondered if he might be related to the Mayor.
And then there’s Café Inés: a bar, a square, a sanctuary of humanity. Inés came here from Lisbon 52 years ago, and today, with Pino, her Sicilian husband, they keep alive a place of memory and social connection. That neighborhood, that migration documentation center, those volunteers collecting oral histories and photographs all tell of a Europe made not only of wealth and unity, but also of poverty, labor, and resilience. Of unity in diversity, not as a slogan but as a lived truth.
The Mois du Respect is the result of deep collaboration between the local government and community organizations. It was launched with a moving concert by the group Cross Hill from the Fondation Kräizbierg—artists with disabilities who, through music, offered a profound sense of dignity and beauty. As the Mayor reminded us: “We want a society that leaves no one behind.”
At ECCAR, we often say: “A community that wishes to call itself anti-racist and anti-discrimination is a community that works daily and relentlessly to create spaces for dialogue and encounter, recognition and collective action.” We would do well to remember that more often. The walls being built today are too often mental, not physical. Initiatives like this one quietly and stubbornly dismantle them. These daily efforts strengthen the democratic resilience of our cities and help them resist the corrosive politics of suspicion and hatred.
ECCAR and Europe find in places like Dudelange a silent yet determined vanguard. Giving them visibility is not just right, it’s vital. It lets us breathe deeper. It lets us breathe freely.
