On March 15th 1957, the Rome treaty was signed between the 6 founding countries: France, West Germany, Italy, Begium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
At that time, I was 15 years old. As there was no TV to annihilate the brain of the young people, I was reading a lot of books, I was reading the newspapers, I was listening to the news on the radio and I knew what was going on in the world. I was old enough to understand that another humiliation was ahead of us in Algeria, and that someday new nations would come up with tremendously more power than our tiny France.
Therefore, since that time I knew that my only hopes for a free and independent future were lying in the building up of a united and Federal Europe that could be strong enough to be a partner (and not a slave) of the most powerful countries that would come up in the future.
I can say that the building of the European Union has been the most significant task of my generation, and I have always believed in its success. I remember when I was flying to Johannesburg in 1995, a South African fellow was seating next to me. I told him that pretty soon we would have a European money. He just raised his shoulders and said: this will never happen. Thanks god it happened and prevented us to have another horrible devaluation during the 2008 financial crisis like the ones we had so often before the European money.
I still think new progresses have to be made. We need a common army, and a true federal government, with enough decision power to be able to discuss on a peer to peer basis with the leading countries in this world.
So I became very desperate when some stupid French politicians decided to gamble against European Integration because they thought that their stand would put them on a better track towards government positions for themselves. I considered these guys as plain traitors preferring their own interest to their country’s interest. This was outraging.
The worst is that they managed to convince enough Frenchmen to reject the project of European constitution.
Fortunately our president Sarkozy was smart enough to convince the other European countries to redesign a new project (taking the most significant advancements of the former constitution project) called the Lisbon Treaty.
Still this Lisbon Treaty had to be ratified unanimously by the 27 European Union member countries.
A great thing happened on november 5th 2009: The Lisbon Treaty was finally ratified and will take effect on December 1st 2009. So the European Construction is again on the Way.
The main thing about it is that the Unanimity Rule for taking decisions is now replaced by the Qualified Majority Rule
(a majority of countries representing at least 65% of the population).
This will end the paralysis of Europe as a nation, which resulted from the incompatibility between the unanimity rule and the enlargement. With 27 members countries no unanimity could ever be achieved anymore and Europe was paralyzed, unable to take any decision in any area with dramatic consequences such as the war in yougoslavia.
Thanks God this is now over, Enlargement can now proceed (next member will be Croatia) and the work towards the construction of the European Union can be resumed.
The treaty (a precursor form of a European Union Constitution) also dictates the nomination of a European Union President and a European Union Foreign Affairs Minister, Yesterday, Mr. Herman Van Rompuy (The current Prime Minister of Belgium) was named President and Mrs Catherine Ashton Has been named Foreign Affairs Minister.
Well, so be it. Lets wish them good luck!
I think the impact of this event is similar to the fall of the Berlin Wall of which we are now celebrating the 20th anniversary. I am very sad that my father passed away just before the fall of the Berlin wall. He did not see it happen.
He had predicted it to me and he had told me that the Soviet Block would end some day. At the time I did not believe him, I thought that the world was divided for ever in two parts, one of them I would never meet and I was not even interested in! How wrong I was and how farseeing my father was! What a change have we witnessed and now I am so happy to have made friends from former eastern countries!
Now we are witnessing the building up of new superpowers. China, India are coming up, with tremendous capacities. Maybe some day Brazil will come out. In this new multipolar world, the only chance of our old European nations to remain a partner rather than to become a slave with the fate of our children being decided somewhere else,
by other people who would leave them only the most meagre portion, is to be federated into a powerful supernation, the United States of Europe.
Well it is called, the European Union, I buy that name. I hope I don’t disappear too early to see it become full fledged, but even if I do, since I am an incurable optimistic, I am sure it will happen.
Now we are back on the track. Let’s move on. Too much time has been wasted and the problems ahead are just appalling, we are living on many timed bombs:
the programmed exhaustion of the earth natural resources in a very near future,
the infuriation of the Muslim world against the occidental world that we have to find a way to calm down (if not we are doomed),
The massive emigration of desperate people towards the richer countries,
The overwhelming majority of the world financial resources in the hands of mafias and drug traffic
(mobile uncontrolled capital exceeds by very far the honest to goodness capital dedicated to enterprise done by people earning their normal life) ,
The unbearable unfairness of life in many countries (if you don’t believe it, just do a hike in the high Andes),
the surge of new diseases and plagues like Aids or the explosion of Cancer cases… and so on and so on.
As it has been said recently by some head of states, we are the last generation that can address these problems more or less in cold blood.
Afterwards it will be a desperate struggle for survival, if any survival is possible.
There used to be a time, in my youth when I was worried about what mankind would do in a million years when the sun would start decreasing!
How futile and blind was I! Now we are wondering if our own grandchildren will be able to live their life!
Any delay is now becoming criminal against our own grandchildren.
Claude