Brussels, 12/09/2006 (Agence Europe) - On 11 September, Mgr Noel Treanor, COMECE Secretary General, told press that the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) planned solemnly to promulgate a manifesto on the significance of the ethical values of European unification at an extraordinary Congress in Rome from 23 to 252 March 2007, on the occasion of the celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. A Committee of the Wise, put in place to produce this text, met of the first time on 11 September in Brussels, and will meet again after the seminar to be held in Clermont-Ferrand from 9 to 11 November and again after the COMECE plenary session on 27 November. Our work will not be “archaeological excavation” on the Treaty of Rome, said Mgr Treanor, and he went on, we hope that our message will confirm the commitment of “Catholics, Christians and people of good will” to work for a Europe “worthy of its citizens”.
Philippe de Schoutheete, former Belgian permanent representative to the EU and one of the “Wise” said that European integration was clearly founded on a number of values - peace, reconciliation, freedom, the rejection of extreme nationalism, solidarity inside and also outside, respect for diversity - but these values had sometimes been “overlooked or largely forgotten”, particularly because of the differences among Member States on the European project's raison d'être. Another member of the Committee, former British permanent representative to the EU, Sir Stephen Wall noted that some people in his country feared the birth of a European “super-state”, yet over the past years, while working around the same table as Philippe, “I was struck by how fragile the process is”. Peace was the motivation for Europe among people of his generation, said Sir Stephen, continuing that we had to see what the motivation for successive generations was. He mentioned solidarity, worldwide responsibilities (including the maintenance of peace), safeguarding the future of the planet - “fundamentally ethical” priorities, he noted. A third of the “Wise”, Professor Tomas Halik, former adviser to Czech President Vaclav Havel, felt that, to the Committee, he could bring reflection touching on the sensitivities of Central and Eastern European Member States.
Among the other members of the Committee of the Wise are the former German MP Karl Lamers (who, along with Wolfgang Schäuble, suggested the formation of a “knot” of countries within the EU to allow European integration to move forward), former minister-president of Baden-Württemberg Erwin Teufel, former European commissioners Mario Monti, Peter Sutherland, Loyola de Palacio and Franz Fischler, MEPs Jacques Santer, Jan Kulakowski, Vytautas Landsbergis, Maria Martens, Alois Peterle, Jozsef Szajer and Anna Zaborska, former managing director of the International Monetary Fund Michel Camdessus, president of the International European Movement Pat Cox and former rector of the College of Europe Jerzy Lukaszewski.