A Reunited Europe
"A reunited Europe" - this fine prospect deservedly hails the enlargement of the European Union to include eight Central European countries, plus Cyprus and Malta. In May 2004, the years of forced separation imposed on Europe, first by the Second World War, then by Soviet domination, will be formally erased. Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, the Baltic states and others will regain the rightful place in a concerted Europe that History acknowledges as theirs.
We will have waited fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin wall for this great venture to reach a successful conclusion. Fifteen years of methodical and painstaking preparation, with the inevitable tensions that the European dialectic implies, to dispel mistrust, to bring together those who had lost contact with each other, and to find compromises between opposing interests.
It is not without apprehension and hesitation that "New Europe" joins "Old Europe" and that the latter welcomes the former. But the divisive forces are apparently wasting their time. The logic of the European construction is such that while meeting the challenge, which may sometimes appear unattainable, is far from a certainty and the way to achieve it often thankless and laborious, there has never been any lack of determination on the part of those involved. Greater prosperity, greater influence and, if possible, greater fairness - the objectives of the Union are shared by all. The day-to-day debate proper to European life does not often leave room for emotion, but impressions can be deceptive: these bellicose old countries, passionate converts to peace, are quite determined to make their mark in an uncertain world, and are a long way from seeing the "End of the Story".
This enlarged Europe necessitates the consolidation of the basic pact. In the 1950s, the "fathers of Europe" decided to ensure Franco-German reconciliation, and thus peace, through the development of closer economic ties. It was on this "small steps" method that the European construction was based for some forty years. The return to the "political", still in the process of development even today, only began in the 1990s, with the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties.
The most serious incidents along the way have confirmed the validity of this cautious approach. There was the "empty chair crisis" (June 1965-February 1966) caused by France under General de Gaulle when the European Commission, under its then president Walter Hallstein, tried a kind of coup de force in an attempt to increase its powers. The still-present double line of fracture characterising European construction was already apparent, and all those involved have to make allowance for it. On the one hand, it is between the federalists concerned to hasten the transfer of authority to supranational institutions and those favouring intergovernmental links, or in other words, defending the prerogatives of States and on the other, between supporters of a Europe that gives priority to links with the United States and those seeking to endow it with a more autonomous status.
It was this concern to construct a "European Europe" that led General de Gaulle in the early 1960s to oppose the admission of a Great Britain deemed too inclined to look across the Atlantic. In 1969, French president Georges Pompidou lifted this veto, which was holding back the progress of the Community - so unfavourably was it perceived by France’s five partners. The inclusion in 1973 of the United Kingdom, whose vision of Europe was very different from that of the founder countries, did not take place without difficulties.
Added to the effects of the international economic recession caused by the "oil crises" of 1973 and 1979, the budgetary battle which divided Great Britain and the other member states for a dozen years or so was the start of a long period of stagnation for the Community adventure. But despite this, nothing was seriously questioned - the Common Market and the Customs Union were saved, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), already disputed, was not challenged again, and on the contrary, some considerable steps forward, in the light of the perilous nature of the times, were made. Thus, in the economic arena, there was the introduction of the European Monetary System, and too, in relation to Europe’s institutions, the creation of the European Council and the election of the European Parliament by universal suffrage on the initiative of French president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
While nothing was compromised, nevertheless the Europe of Ten (Greece joined in 1981), which emerged from the Fontainebleau European Council (June 1984), experienced a hard time: inflation, numerous obstacles to free trade, unpredictable monetary stability ... A re-launch policy was essential. This was the "single market" battle, initiated by the Commission presided over by Frenchman Jacques Delors and won thanks to the support of the French President, François Mitterrand, and the German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl. More than three hundred directives were adopted in seven years! A strong economic situation facilitated things. In 1993, the target year set by Jacques Delors, the Community was entitled to feel proud: the "four freedoms" (free movement of people, goods, capital and services) had made considerable progress.
The establishment of the single market, while not entirely complete, appeared irreversible. Facilitated by a significant financial outlay (a doubling of structural funds (see article Europe’s new horizon) on two occasions, in 1988 and 1992), Spain and Portugal’s joining was a real success. To the outside world, especially the United States and Japan, the European construction was more fascinating than ever, regarded with a mixture of fear ("fortress Europe") and approval for its stabilising virtues at world level.
In the late 1980s, the Community started work on economic and monetary Union. This operation, for which methods and procedures were made clear in the treaty concluded at Maastricht in December 1991, is regarded both as the necessary complement to the single market and as a tremendous political step on the road to integration.
The disappearance of the Soviet threat, which had acted as one of the levers of the European construction, led the Community, strengthened by its economic success, to try to launch itself as a diplomatic high flier, keen to carry more weight in world affairs. The Treaties of Maastricht, then of Amsterdam, mark this determination to establish a common foreign and security policy. Yet this phase (the 1990s) was less fruitful than its predecessor. Economic and monetary problems, arising mainly from German reunification, hit growth and employment. Public opinion, too long ignored, began to manifest reservations about a path judged to be too technocratic. Evidence of this came with the defeat in the referendum for the ratification of Maastricht in Denmark and the scant success of the same exercise in France.
In diplomacy, Europe’s interventions in the Yugoslav conflict were for a long time uncoordinated. Further enlargement to Austria, Finland and Sweden took place in 1995, without work on reform of the institutions getting under way, even though they had run out of steam, as was revealed most notably by the forced resignation of the Commission in 1999.
Despite the resounding success of the introduction of the euro and the smooth working of the European Central Bank (ECB), responsible for the monetary policy of the twelve countries sharing the single currency, it was an exhausted Union, incapable of trying anything new, that found itself at the Nice European Council in December 2000. A year earlier, enlargement had been decided upon in an almost irreversible way. It was thus a matter of urgency to react in order not to compromise what had been achieved and to lay the foundations for new and fruitful ways of cooperating. This was the mission of the Convention on the Future of Europe which, during the presidency of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, brought together representatives of governments, the Commission, national parliaments and the European Parliament. As a result of the composition of the Convention, the institutional reforms (see article From Convention to Constitution, the long march to the Europe of twenty-five) contained in the draft then submitted for endorsement by the governments, enjoy exceptional legitimacy.
The next part of the story is no less challenging. Europe will have to take a pragmatic approach to finding new ways to enable it to act effectively. The rifts caused by the war in Iraq reveal that differences persist. However, despite this crisis, the desire to work together seems to have won the day, as shown by the dynamic of reconciliation vigorously embarked upon during the second half of 2003 by French president, Jacques Chirac, the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. The idea of a Europe as master of its own destiny, more autonomous, apparently, beyond the ups and downs, exerts an ever greater and stronger attraction.
The European Union
on 1 May 2004
Click to enlarge
1951: the Six (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the Federal Republic of Germany) signed the Treaty of Paris instituting the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC).
1957: the Six signed the Treaty of Rome instituting the European Economic Community (EEC).
1962: first community policy, CAP (Common Agricultural Policy).
1968: the Customs’ Union between the Six comes into force.
1973: the United Kingdom, Denmark and Ireland join the Community.
1979: the European Monetary System (EMS) is introduced, first European Parliamentary election by universal suffrage.
1981: Greece joins the Community.
1986: Spain and Portugal join the Community.
1992: signing of the Maastricht Treaty on economic and monetary union.
1993: the single market comes into force.
1995: Austria, Finland and Sweden join the Community.
1999: Treaty of Amsterdam comes into force, which brings new domains into the scope of the Community (social policy, coordination of national employment policies, creation of an "area of freedom, security and justice", outline of a reform of the institutions, introduction of new instruments for the common foreign and security policy, etc.).
2001: signature of the Nice Treaty, decision to summon a Convention to propose institutional reforms in preparation for enlargement.
January 2002: changeover to the single currency.
December 2002: the Copenhagen European Council concludes membership negotiations with ten countries (Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta), and agrees to their admission to the European Union on 1 May 2004. Target entry of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. A new date is agreed with Turkey, in December 2004, to decide whether or not to open negotiations.
October 2003: intergovernmental conference responsible for examining the Convention’s proposals and ruling on the draft European constitution.
1 May 2004: the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Cyprus and Malta officially become members of the European Union.
June 2004: European Parliamentary elections in all twenty-five countries of the Union.