Fifty years has witnessed serious crises because of the paradoxes of the integration and the enlargement. Competition with other actors, internal cleavages and disharmony between peoples were in fact triggers for integration, and paradoxically helped the process to move forward. Every question found a consensus solution and this process in turn made Europe a region of security, stability and prosperity. As a unique body the EU had to face both the advantages and disadvantages of being unique. The EU never had the opportunity to profit from other experiences. This has made the EU a center of attraction and a target. The European integration project was at the beginning a project for world peace. It was hoped that this kind of cooperation would spread all around the world, once it was realized in Europe. But the “security community” project was much too Kantian, and the EU has become an institution which is willing to ostracize itself from the world’s contradictions, rather than becoming an enlarged peace and stability project.
The current status of the EU was not the founders’ intentions, but nevertheless today Europe is in the middle of internal and external contradictions. Europe has a unique currency and several common policies, but does not have the capacity to quickly and transparently ease social reactions to this process. It is unknown how many Europeans really want to stay within this partnership. Its unknown even who is a European, what is or what should the common foreign policy be. This what Europeans are thinking on their 50th anniversary. Common sense is trying to figure out how economic, social and cultural differences will be transformed to a common political attitude under the motto “unity in diversity.” The main paradox that will dictate the next 50 years of the EU is between diversity and unification. Because the unification process is triggering diversities and as diversities grow, the need for unification becomes more powerful.
In order to resolve this Europe wants to obtain a new common ground by writing a new common history. But it is not easy to do this without any common expectation about the future. The EU is becoming an attraction and a target at the same time, because it is still incapable of defining itself. In this ensemble of 500 million people, only 2 percent of the workers are working in a foreign member country, only 1.5 million students are studying in a foreign university within the Union. Most people still live in their homeland. This is not helping to forge the coexistence of differences.
Today’s differences are not easily described only with historical facts. Europe has deepened and multiplied differences during its evolution and has no idea now how to manage these.
It would be nice to have Turkey join the 50th anniversary celebrations in Berlin.
