Central European politics has produced few more compelling figures in the present generation than President Vaclav Havel. His state visit, which began yesterday, is linked with the enlargement of the European Union and also, by its timing, coincides with the beginning of the Irish presidency of the European Council. He was one of the major figures in the cataclysmic events that brought down the Soviet empire seven years ago, and for more than 20 years before that was involved in democratic opposition to Soviet repression. Europe has few contemporary heroes, but Vaclav Havel is one of them.
Seven years on, the excitement at the ferment of activity that followed the political collapse in central and eastern Europe is all but forgotten in the West. The initial surge of optimism at the reinstatement of democracy and the return to old historical patterns of culture and trade has been replaced by awareness of the immense difficulties that change entails, and the slow pace of establishing reforms. President Havel's speech at Trinity College yesterday - a carefully woven argument for the deeper values that underlie European integration - was a corrective, taking the historical continuum as its theme. The viewpoint, perhaps, comes more easily in the east where history has been reasserting itself than in the west where it is often ignored.
In the early days of what has become the European Union, it was not difficult to see a purpose beyond the removal of tariffs and the development of common economic and political strategies for uniting the continent. Three major wars in three quarters of a century between Germany and France, two of which had developed into global conflicts, provided an unanswerable reason for abolishing national divisions. Economics was ancillary; politics and idealism were fundamental. But as the threat of war receded, economics, and national competition, moved to centre stage.
President Havel argued not just for a dynamic sense of Europe based on its common history, culture and spirituality, but for its world vision. "Europeans should give deeper thought to the historical significance of their magnificent unification effort, they should look for the true and innermost reason behind it and for its broader mission, they should reflect upon their relationship to the world as a whole, to its future, to nature and to the grave dangers looming over humankind today. In keeping with the spirit of its own universalism, Europe should realise that the European question is a human and global question as well."
It is a fair bet that nothing like this will appear on the agenda of the Inter governmental Conference. Nor is it necessary that it should. The constructors of Europe are its diplomats and technical experts. But it also needs its architects and great visionaries, and for the past generation these have been in short supply. Perhaps it is paradoxical that hugely significant events like the unification of Germany and the opening of the east have not unleashed a corresponding surge of emotional energy to strengthen interdependence. President Havel, at least, has pointed out the direction in which all the furious activity should be tending.