In Europe

original member states – and particularly the right of veto – could hardly keep a community of twenty-five member states going. The negotiations in Nice failed miserably, and the Union was faced with a majorproblem. To break through the impasse, a special European Convention was assigned to come up with a new European constitution, and that's where we find ourselves today.
    ‘I have been involved with this all my life, emotionally and intellectually. Sometimes, in a pessimistic mood, I think the EU will never be more than a European free-trade zone with a golden lining. Of course I have my moments of anxiety … But what is the alternative?
    ‘I remember a conversation I had with Monnet in his garden in Luxembourg, it must have been in late summer 1953. He had just returned from his holidays, and I had to report on the little that had happened during August. He listened patiently for a few minutes, then stopped me and said: “That's all very well, but how are we going to define our relations with America and the Soviet Union?”
    ‘Today, the issue of Europe's position in the world is once again timely. After the end of the Cold War, the world – in the technical sense – became more tightly interwoven. But the political divisiveness remains, and that produces major tensions in the long run. From the very beginning we were interested in more than just coal and steel, more than just a common market, more than an economic and monetary union, more than friendship between the participating states: it was about a revolution in international relations.
    ‘It was Thucydides who described the dealings between states as a world in which the strong do as they like, and the weak put up with what they must. Power and dominion form the basis of that system, even when a balance has been achieved within it. But neither the hegemony of a given superpower nor the attempt to prevent wars by means of a balance of power have ever led to lasting peace. The big question remains: can power be replaced as a ruling principle in international relations by justice? And how can justice, if it is not to deteriorate into mere words receive access to power? Can we, to that end, develop other forms of power, in order to establish justice between states?
    ‘Now that modern weaponry has made the danger of war even greater, this question has become even more urgent. A European fort, a sort of Switzerland on a large scale, is an illusion in today's world. The power to destroy, once the monopoly held by the state, is now in the hands of anyone who can obtain the necessary information through the Internet.The power of mass destruction, in other words, has become increasingly privatised in this world. In such a situation, can the international institutions with their joint responsibility provide justice that is accompanied by the power it needs?
    ‘For our civilisation, the ability to develop a robust international rule of law is a matter of survival. Is that a utopia? No: for half a century, Europe has been proving that it is possible.
    ‘The generation after my own, and probably later generations as well, will have to find answers to all these new questions. Peace, security and prosperity are as valuable as they are fragile. The care for their survival is something that will not let me go. Yes, of course – that has everything to do with that cold parade ground in Amersfoort.’

    Brussels still smells of coffee. In Zuidstraat I see a shop window built from brown planks, containing five rolls of tape, a lectern and an old typewriter: all of it perfectly arranged. The nearby bookshop displays albums showing pictures of the lively street life of Brussels around the year 1900, the crowds on the boulevards (the city's population then was ten times what it had been a century before), the train terminuses of North and South, the carts and carriages shuttling back and forth, day in and day out, the perpetually congested streets of the old Brussels. In Spaarzaamheidstraat I duck out of the rain, into the portico of a shelter for the homeless. One of the nuns invites me in. The transients of Brussels have wonderful stories and gestures, only a few of them lean their heads on their arms and doze off on the tables. The shelter has no need of subsidies, the kitchen does wonderfully well with the crumbs from the city's table. ‘In a little while we'll go to the National Bank,’ one of the nuns tells me. ‘They always have at least two thermoses of