In Europe

Berlin. Which explains how I ended up the next morning in that huge, deathly quiet Stalin-Allee, walking along there on my own, not another soul in sight. Then suddenly, still half asleep, I heard a rumbling and saw something moving in the distance, and there they were: Russian tanks! Having grown up in Holland, you think: the war has broken out! Until I realised that it was only the startof the 1 May parades. But that's how violent our reactions were back then, still moulded by that constant tension between East and West.
    ‘I was born in 1939; in the 1950s Europe to me was the Marshall Plan, cities, travelling, culture. In the 1960s I suppose I didn't have much to do with Europe. There were Catholic young people's conferences of course, international seminars, I even stayed in Lisbon for six weeks once. But, unlike my future colleagues Helmut Kohl or Jean-Luc Dehaene, I was not caught up in the “European adventure” from an early age. Europe was alive for me, very much so, but not as a political idea.
    ‘In 1973 I was appointed finance minister in the Netherlands. That was when I first started hearing talk of Europe, the jokes about de Gaulle, Luns and Adenauer. But to me, Europe in those days was more of a technical matter: massive dossiers, endless meetings, the old boneshaker in which you were driven to Brussels all the time. That's where the committees met, and it was only natural for a finance or foreign minister to play an important role. In those days, the meetings were hard-nosed, they had nothing to do with European idealism. You were there as a cabinet minister with administrative responsibilities. And, of course, a lot of issues were still being dealt with entirely outside the EEC. The Netherlands, for example, had a head-on trade conflict with Japan, and as a Dutch cabinet minister in those days you went to Japan to negotiate directly. It was only gradually that things like that became European issues. The 1973 oil crisis wasn't seen as a European affair either: we still saw that as a Dutch problem. The OPEC boycott, after all, directly impacted only the Netherlands and the US.
    ‘Four years later, as parliamentary leader for the Dutch Christian Democratic Alliance, I first became acquainted with the European Christian Democrats. That was the first time that I met men like Kohl, Martens and Andreotti as fellow politicians. And gradually I began to form a new perception of Europe, a political perception, very different from the bureaucratic Europe I had known before.
    ‘In 1982 I was appointed prime minister of the Netherlands. In Copenhagen, at the European Council of Ministers, I met my European colleagues for the first time. I already knew Wilfried Martens, Helmut Kohl and Margaret Thatcher, of course, but there in Copenhagen I saw the whole club together for the first time. Right from the start of thatmeeting, there was this incredible tension between Thatcher and Mitterrand. The crux of Mitterrand's arguments was that investing in Europe meant turning our back on America, discovering our own strengths, protecting ourselves. After that, and on that basis, one could start initiating dialogues outside Europe. His story, in short, was an anti-American one. Our own strengths first. Thatcher said: “Rubbish. Rot. Open the doors. Free trade.”
    ‘The bureaucracy of the 1970s seemed to have vanished, and I found myself taking part in a political debate, all afternoon. Ten years before that, as far as I know, such open discussions between European heads of government simply did not take place. In those days Europe was still seen as a matter for intergovernmental officials, plus a few cabinet members, usually the ministers of finance, agriculture and foreign affairs. That was it, that was Europe. Very concrete, based on a limited number of institutions, dealing with practical problems.
    ‘That evening in Copenhagen, after dinner, the discussion continued informally about what Europe really meant, about European culture, even about the role of the Reformation. At that point, looking back on it now, we were already working on an entirely new concept of Europe – not a technical Europe, but a political one. And despite all our differences, we formed a kind of club.
    ‘Which is not to say that the practical cooperation between our countries went without a hitch. There was a lot of talk, wonderful plans were made, but it all went rather awkwardly. Bit by bit, though, between 1982–9, we succeeded in