In Europe

ties of language, culture, economic and military power, the 1950s saw burgeoning welfare arrangements that elicited a new brand of nationalism. Each land developed its own ‘legacies’, valuable claims that no one wanted to surrender – and preferably not share with foreigners: ample pension facilities, good health care, generous disability benefits.
    In this way, a complicated situation arose. Max Kohnstamm, one of the last living pioneers, put it this way during one of our conversations: ‘The market is a merciless god. Its counterpoint, compassion, cannot be based entirely on charity; if it hopes to remain durable, it must be based on rules of law. The market these days is regulated on a European scale, but the compassion is organised largely at the national level. And it is apparently very difficult indeed to raise that compassion to a European level, because, traditionally, it differs so widely from one country to the next.'When it comes to communal social regulations, therefore, that single Europe still seems far away – and it may never arrive at all.
    Much more complicated was the political manoeuvring surrounding the expansion of the Union. For the Germans, whose country has more neighbours than any other European nation, the expansion was vital. Only in that way, after all, could peace and stability in that corner of Europe be guaranteed for future generations. The British saw in the newcomers, above all, a group of new allies. The Central and Eastern Europeans were never in favour of a strong federal Union and, after long years under communism, were dead opposed to excessive market regulation. The French had no choice: they realised that their ‘baby’, the European Union, was very much taking on a life of its own, but at the same time they could not, morally, permit themselves to use their veto against expansion. In desperation, therefore, they voted for
‘le beau geste
’.
    ‘The community we have created is not a goal in itself,’ Jean Monnet wrote at the end of his memoirs in 1978. ‘The community is merely a step towards the organised world of tomorrow.’ That prediction has, in part, come true: the European experiment has indeed proven to be an inspiring example to other parts of the world. Yet in many ways, exactly the opposite has happened: the European Community often acts as a fortress, as a hermetic trading bloc with which to obstruct and frustrate the emergence of poorer countries.
    In the course of this half century, the political mood within the EU has greatly changed. The democratic clarity of the first years has disappeared. The mediating power of the political parties has been weakened. With the rejection of the constitution, the ideal of the European federation could be stowed away. Potential new members are received withoutmuch enthusiasm. The tone is no longer set by the community itself, but by divergent national interests, and by a million and one intergovern-mental issues. The chance that a ‘two-speed Europe’ will arise, a wealthy Euro-bloc with a series of poorer satellite states, is clear and present.
    At the same time, the EU remains the most successful experiment in the field of international political institutions since the Second World War. The Union constitutes the largest market on earth. It is the largest exporter and the largest foreign investor. It is home to many of the world's largest and most successful concerns. The introduction of the euro went swimmingly, the expansion of the Union was a textbook example of successful ‘soft power’: never had so few means been required to so greatly promote democracy, prosperity and stability throughout such a large part of Europe.
    The pioneers present at the outset of the European Community were brought together by a common fate. All six countries had, in one way or another, made it through the war, all those who participated in the negotiations had experienced enormous chaos and destruction. The solutions they came up with in the space of those fifty years were designed for that little group of six countries, small and surveyable. But with twenty-five countries now taking part, the EU can no longer be run in that fashion. The right to veto of five hundred thousand Greek Cypriots, for example, can forever frustrate the negotiations for the admission to the Union of sixty-five million Turks. If only for that reason, a new organisational foundation – be it in the form of a new kind of constitution or a new