The adventure continues

On 9 May 1950 “the French government, with its solemn declaration, chose Europe”, which “resolutely took the Community road, pledge of prosperity, security and peace”. These are the words of Robert Schuman, a Catholic, a man of great culture and human sensibility, French Foreign Minister and author of the famous “Declaration” thanks to which, in the spring of 1950, sixty years ago, the process of integration in Europe began to take form, launched in practice with the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951, which grew into the EEC (1957) and finally into what is now the European Union (1992). Schuman, long on the national and international stage, wrote his memoirs in Mentone, in 1963, which would later form the preface of his “political testament”: the volume “Pour l’Europe”. He added: “The harsh lessons of history have taught the frontiersman that I am to beware of hasty improvizations, over-ambitious projects, but they also taught me that, when an objective judgement, seriously pondered, based on the reality of facts and on the higher interest of man, leads us to new, even revolutionary initiatives, it is necessary firmly to stick with them and to persevere, even if they collide with traditional customs, centuries-old antagonisms and old habits”.With his Declaration in 1950, Schuman had identified the reasons and at the same time the method to overcome the ancient divisions between France and Germany and begin the economic and political process of the European Community. “World Peace – says the Schuman Declaration – cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers that threaten it. The contribution which an organized and living Europe can bring to civilization is indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations”. The tragic experience of the war had only recently ended and it was vital, Schuman was convinced, to promote stable, friendly and fruitful relations between the countries of the old continent, it in turn split into two by the Iron Curtain. The intuition of Schuman (and of Jean Monnet, his close friend and ally) was to “start out from the base”, from the economy, and then progressively foster the need to give rise to a “political creature” which could guide economic development with institutions that in turn would generate an unprecedented supranational cooperation between the six founding States. As for method, later defined as “pragmatic”, Schuman was equally explicit: “Europe – he also said in the Declaration on 9 May 1950 – will not be made all at once, according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements, which first create a de facto solidarity”. The first such proposal was that “Franco-German production of coal and steel as a whole be placed under a common High Authority, within the framework of an organization open to the participation of the other countries of Europe”.The successive stages in the creation of the European Community demonstrate that Schuman’s farsightedness enabled Europe to abandon the manufacture of the munitions of war and embark instead on the road of pacification, law and material development. The history of the Community is one of an alternation of undoubted successes and false steps, of goals reached and current “incompleteness”. All things considered, however, it can be maintained that the progress made has been considerable and that the merit for this must go to Schuman himself and to the other “fathers” of integration, including the German Konrad Adenauer and the Italian Alcide De Gasperi: both, like Schuman, Catholics and frontiersmen.The Community adventure continues today. It has to face up to new challenges such as globalization, market competition and instability, the ageing of the population, the influx of immigrants, the advance of technology, environmental exploitation and so on. If it is to go forwards, the EU must take to heart the above-cited words of Schuman urging us, when faced by a noble objective, not to waver but to persevere in our intention, albeit with the ability to adapt instruments and resources to the changed contexts in which we have to work. We need a democracy of “responsibility” and of “solidarity”, so close to the heart of the “frontiersman”, who also pointed out in “Pour l’Europe”: “Democracy is not something improvised; Europe took over a millennium of Christianity for it to be shaped”.