EU: The EU needs to become a community, a former Polish foreign minister asserted in Dublin at the weekend. Deaglán de Bréadún, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, reports
The European Union needed to become a community which gave its citizens a sense of belonging, rather than an alliance for economic integration, according to former Polish foreign minister and leader of the Solidarity movement, Prof Bronislaw Geremek.
Prof Geremek, in a lecture to the Dublin European Institute on Friday, described European enlargement as a historic event, because the continent could now be unified in the real sense, overcoming the divisions of the Yalta Pact and the differences in evolution between western and eastern Europe.
Central Europe had finally returned to its proper place in the European Community.
Recalling the uprisings against Soviet rule from East Berlin in 1953 to Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968, he said that, "over the past half-century, these movements of resistance were also movements of hope". The "enclave of freedom" established by the Solidarity movement in Poland for 500 days in 1980-81 had foreshadowed the Velvet Revolutions of 1989.
These events in turn led to the reunification of Germany and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Now an unprecedented total of 10 new member-States, mostly from the old Soviet bloc, were joining the EU on May 1st.
But the decision to accept these new member-states was "not notable for its generosity". No special terms had been offered, since Europe, especially Germany, was undergoing a recession. In addition, accession to the EU was not well-understood in central European societies. Poles, for example, were finding the modernisation of agriculture, with its accompanying lifestyle changes, to be a painful process.
The governments and parliaments of the candidate countries had made an "enormous effort" to adapt to EU legal requirements in the acquis communautaire, which was applied more strictly than in some existing member-states. The "long-awaited Marshall Plan" from the West never emerged.
In the memories of the Polish people there were still problems about the historical experience of coexistence with Germany. Then there was the crisis with France and Germany over Iraq and the European Constitution.
The West had been "a little bit surprised" in 1989 with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and its consequences and this was the origin of some weaknesses in preparation for EU enlargement.
It was now time to change the philosophy of economic integration. The EU was becoming "a community or federation of citizens". But the first and fundamental problem was the gap in living standards between current and new member-states. There was "a kind of Rio Grande division", as existed between Mexico and the US.
As regards the EU's inner structure and internal balance, the traumatic experience of losing national sovereignty in Soviet times should be taken into account but should not be "dramatised".
"With our different historical experiences we need a community and not only an alliance. We hope that the EU will become a community." In the field of external relations, Prof Geremek called for the creation of a European ostpolitik towards the Balkans as well as the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia itself. The new member-states had knowledge and experience of these regions.
Poland and the other central European countries needed a strong EU, but there were good reasons for Poland to have some criticisms of the proposed constitution, e.g., the omission of what even Voltaire called "Christian Europe" from the preamble.
"The preamble matters if the EU will become a community because an alliance doesn't need a reference to the past but a human community needs two references: a reference to history and a reference to the future. A community needs the memory, meaning the historical dimension of politics, and it needs a vision of the future."
As regards the voting system, citizens did not want a community where some were more equal than others and it would be good to obtain a consensus against a hegemonic structure. He hoped that under the Irish presidency this consensus would be reached.