Newropeans in London - transnational european political movement for the democratisation of the EU - european party

The resounding anniversary of the European vision.

March 14th, 2007

March 2007 – From the Treaty of Rome to Erasmus:
The resounding anniversary of the European vision.

March 2007 marks the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome and at the same time the 20th anniversary of the launch of the education programme “Erasmus”. For Newropeans, this double anniversary illustrates perfectly the historical transition period which the EU is currently experiencing: from the end of the construction phase and the beginning of the EU governance phase. The past 50 years, which have witnessed the success of the construction of Europe by the administrative and political elites, have opened the door to the next decades for European citizens to organise their new common environment.

For Newropeans, who – for the first time in the European Union history - will have candidates running for European elections in the 27 Member States in June 2009, this jubilee month is a milestone step toward the historical democratic governance of 500 million united Europeans citizens.

This step will require as much imagination, endeavour, courage and political will as the founders of the EU needed 50 years ago. Because it is their very memory which carried the European vision for so long that needs to revive and inspire us. Forget about slipping into the fetishism of the foundation Treaty celebrations, which EU institutions and today’s national political class use to hide their political vacuum regarding European’s future. The Treaty of Rome did not create the generations of that time, but vice versa: it is the people of that time that made the Treaty of Rome and built up the European Community. It was their choice to develop European unity within a divided Europe.

The European vision was indeed well alive in the heart of the generations that built the Community foundations before 1957 and that helped to successfully overcome huge obstacles such as the deep wounds and scars the war left and its massive destructions, the division of the continent and eternal national suspicions.

This vision was the outcome of a unique awareness, which was born after the European civil wars of the first half of the XX century. This awareness was a very European mixture of pessimistic intelligence and optimistic will-power, which was constantly aware of the risks of failure, and nevertheless always intently moved forward in order to resume the work initiated, i.e.: to democratise as many European states as possible and simultaneously unite as many of those as possible in the same political entity.

This European vision was carried by non-conformist generations, that usually matured from the fight for freedom, solidarity and democracy, against Nazism and Fascism. The EU founders were bold enough to question the impossible by evading the fatality of never-ending resumptions of European history. They accepted being considered dreamers, while they were precisely refusing the irrationality of a collective dream that always ended in an historical nightmare. On the contrary, the EU founders enshrined their action in the field of a rational vision, because they were aware of the risks of failure. It is for this very reason, that they managed to pave the new and infinitely promising way of a future for the Europeans, which now even make sense for the rest of the world.

Fortunately this vision is alive in the founders’ grand-children, who are the Erasmus generations. They were the first generations to be born after the Treaty of Rome and they are ready to carry on in the face of the new historical challenge: to invent a governance for 500 millions European citizens from 27 different peoples, while staying faithful to the principles of democracy, solidarity and freedom.

While those very same people who created a flop out of the project of a European Constitution are trying, like fallen dwarfs from giants’ shoulders, to revitalize with memorializing pomposity, Europe’s spring is sprouting out. Europe’s spring is preparing the political and public fields, besides official ceremonies.

Indeed, March on our continent symbolises the month of renewal. With the 20-year anniversary of Erasmus, the Treaty of Rome’s direct inheritor is on track. The Newropeans and their project of democratisation of the EU is European’s first sign of spring. It is the best present that we can offer the master-builder generation of post-war years: to revive the European vision, not because we pretend to know all answers to the upcoming challenges that the future will bring, but because, such as the post-war generations, we humbly hope to be able to deal with them.

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