On the Eve of
the Creation of the Euro, There Remains the Question: What
is Europe?
By JONATHAN
POWER
December 28, 1998
LONDON - Writing in 1751 Voltaire described Europe as
"a kind of great republic, divided into several states, some
monarchical, the others mixed but all corresponding with one
another. They have all the same religious foundation, even
if divided into several confessions. They all have the same
principles of public law and politics unknown in other parts
of the world."
At 11.30 pm. Central European Time, on December 31st,
European Union central bankers will send their currency
rates versus the dollar to the central bank of Belgium. The
"Big Bang" of currency union can then be set underway as
midnight strikes. In a way that Charlemagne, Voltaire,
William Penn and Gladstone, the early advocates of European
unity, could only dream, a united Europe becomes an almighty
reality. A single currency is the most dramatic of the steps
taken so far towards what surely one day will be a single
political entity.
War, time and time again, has interrupted the pursuit of
that objective. Continued civil war across the continent,
across the centuries, has pitted French against Germans,
British against Italians, Czechs against Poles, Spaniards
against Spaniards, Gentiles against Jews, reaching its
dreadful climax in World War 2. As Jan Morris has written in
her "Fifty Years of Europe", "great cities lay in ruin,
bridges were broken, roads and railways were in chaos.
Conquerors from East and West flew their ensigns above the
seats of old authority, and proud populations would do
almost anything for a pack of cigarettes or some nylon
stockings. Europe was in shock, powerless, discredited and
degraded".
Many, if not most, of that generation wondered in 1945 if
they'd ever see Europe again in any state of grace or glory
much less unified.
The fact that the urge to bury the hatchet and forge
common institutions has come so far in such a short time
against such a background is arguably the twentieth
century's greatest political achievement. (Following the
Declaration of Independence it took the U.S. nearly 90 years
to establish a fully mature common currency; Europe has
travelled the same course in 40 years.)
Yet, this astonishing triumphal moment--only slightly
tarnished by Britain, Sweden and Denmark choosing to sit it
out--begs the question, what is the glue that holds it all
together? After all what is Europe? Geographically, it is no
more than a peninsula protruding from the land mass of Asia.
Culturally, it has always been a potage of languages,
peoples and traditions. Politically, it is a moveable feast;
of the 35 sovereign states in post Iron Curtain Europe, nine
have been created or resurrected since World War 2.
Indeed it is religion, not politics nor economic and
monetary union that through the ages has made Europe one,
held it together through its vicissitudes (many, tragically,
of religious origin) and provided the common morality and
common identity that makes a single currency possible today
and political union a tangible, if still hotly debated, goal
tomorrow.
Broadcasting to a defeated Germany in 1945, the poet T.S.
Elliot reminded his audience that despite the war and "the
closing of Europe's mental frontiers because of an excess of
nationalism" "it is in Christianity that our arts have
developed; it is in Christianity that the laws of
Europe--until recently--have been rooted. An individual
European may not believe the Christian faith is true; and
yet what he says, and makes, and does, will depend on the
Christian heritage for its meaning."
Of course, today one can ask what do the contemporary
cults of finance, sports, TV, pop culture and eroticism have
to do with a Christian heritage? Nevertheless, despite all,
the fact is through changing fashions, through wars big and
small, the idea of Europe that persists is essentially
Christian. On its own, economic self-interest never would
have created monetary union. Economic and monetary union has
been driven all along by men and women who were essentially
idealistic and visionary. From Jean Monnet, the founder of
modern Europe to Helmut Schmidt, Valery Giscard D'Estaing
and Helmut Kohl, the founders and creators of the Euro, the
urge to remove the causes of belligerency and to form
institutions that would further the development of a common
democracy have been a central purpose.
Europe is not, as midnight strikes on Thursday, first and
foremost a political concept or a financial convenience. It
is an ideal. Thus it will never be complete. We will work at
it all our lives, as will future generations. But January 1,
1999, will always be seen, I believe, as one of its great
defining moments.
Copyright © 1998 By JONATHAN POWER
Note: I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and
e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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