How many years has it been since we have heard a speech by a president of the European Commission as optimistic and encouraging as that delivered last Friday by José Manuel Barroso in Italy? It is true that the occasion lent itself to such a speech. It was the opening of the academic year at the European College of Parma. After all, if one cannot be stimulating when addressing young people about to set out on a year of specialised study on the edifice of Europe, when can one be?
Is enthusiasm coming back? Mr Barroso noted that, at the present time, support for a united Europe is spreading and growing stronger. Opinion polls bear witness to this: the citizens of the EU are increasingly aware of the advantages and prospects of membership, and candidate countries dream only of accession. According to the president, “facts go to show that we are on the right track”. No isolated European country, whichever one it may be, could influence responses to the current global challenges, or uphold in its responses the principles and values that Europe defends, as demonstrated by recent international discussions on climate change. Governments know this and citizens are becoming aware of it. Several days earlier, Mr Barroso had personally attended the enlargement ceremonies for the Schengen Area. No formal ceremonies with speeches and mutual back-patting between leaders but the physical abolition of barriers between countries, their demolition in a dozen or more border posts. And he saw the emotion - and even the tears - that this caused. The president's speech on this recalled to the older members of Europe similar moments that they had witnessed half a century ago, when the barriers had been physically abolished between Italy and France, France and Germany, and between these two countries and the Benelux. “The time is ripe for a return to enthusiasm”, he said. The new European treaty will soon improve and enlarge the EU's possibilities of action, and Mr Barroso has expressed his confidence that all member states will ratify it in the near future.
A treaty is only an instrument. Such prompting for confidence and enthusiasm was nonetheless accompanied by a second message that, in Mr Barroso's eyes, is just as important - texts and instruments are not sufficient in themselves if they are not backed by a political will to act. The new treaty is a signal but “a treaty will never replace political resolve, it is an instrument, essential but insufficient”. Mr Barroso called on the new European generation to find the impetus that seemed partly lost, and to also rekindle political unity while safeguarding the identities of each and every member. Political unity is not just a question of ideals but also of realism, as it is essential for Europe to play an active role in the new world that is coming into being, where there will no longer be room for hegemonies, and where there will no longer be a “centre”, whether in Europe or elsewhere, but a balance between the older and the new emerging powers, which are already here.
Europe of Ideals and Europe of Results are not contradictory. The third message is not new if one has been following the way the thinking of the Commission president has been evolving. This message is the rejection of dualism, of the claimed contradiction between the main objectives and daily reality. Europe of Results is not an alternative to Europe of Ideals, results are ideals that have been given concrete substance. The Commission is at the heart of this exercise of implementation, the next example of which will be energy policy (the plan of action will be presented in a few days' time), which, with the fight against climate change, will represent the basis of a new industrial revolution with Europe indicating the road to follow, overcoming the contradictions between economic growth and sticking to values.
One student at the College of Parma, speaking on behalf of all the students there (from Community and eastern European countries and Mediterranean countries) said: “We are preparing to become the new actors in the history of Europe”. Alfonso Mattera, the scientific director of the College, recalled his suggestion to entrust a temporary task to those pupils that have passed or are to pass the “advanced diploma of European studies” delivered by the College. That task will be to act as ambassadors of the European idea in schools of member states, explaining to the new generations, as young people to people that are still younger, the meaning, objectives and results of European integration. This indeed does seem a useful thing to do given how little the preceding generation (those who did not live through the last World War in their childhood) know of and sometimes distort the revolution that the birth of the European Community represents for the history of Europe and the world.
(F.R.)