THE EUROPEAN – SECURITY AND DEFENCE UNION
European Union With Lisbon, the EU has made a step forward. Might the solidarity clause create more confidence between the nations and promote progress? Oliver Bruzek .......................................................................... 8 Simon Busuttil MEP................................................................ 11 Ilkka Laitinen ....................................................................... 14 Ioan Dascălu ......................................................................... 16
Lisbon was a step in the evolution of the EU − what are the objectives and how to proceed?
How to make Europe a nation? by Oliver Bruzek, Director, Aachen “Nations are not something eternal. They have their beginnings and they will end. A European confederation will very probably replace them”. The French writer and scholar, Ernest Renan, ventured this statement in his speech at the Sorbonne on 11th March 1882. However, he did not do this without emphasising in the same speech that nations were therefore not an insignificant phenomenon but were necessary in that epoch; indeed, “…their existence is the guarantee of liberty which would be lost if the world had only one law and only one master”.
Europe needs a big picture When we look at things from today’s perspective and as the question of the future of Europe remains unresolved, one thing above all appears to be missing: the big picture − the vision of the future. Our debates are limited to overcoming day-to-day economic, social and political problems, in which we pretend our nations (or states) in Europe enjoy an autonomous freedom of action in a globalized world that has not existed for a long time. The issue of the aim of European politics must finally come back onto the agenda, and we can scarcely afford to shirk it. After all, setting a clear objective has a decisive impact on social developments on our continent as
Oliver Bruzek Director, International Markets, CAE (Stolberg) since 2008. He was born in 1968. 2007 − 2008: Director General, Brain-World (Ulm); 2002 − 2007: Director Government Relations, EADS Defense and Security (Ulm); 1999 − 2002: Marketing Consultant, Euromissile (Paris); 1997 − 1999: Advisor on Defense and Security Politics, German Parliament (Bonn); 1992 − 1997: Eurocorps, (Strasbourg). Author and Co-author of various publications, e.g. “Wörterbuch zur Sicherheitspolitik” with Bühl and Kujat (Hamburg, 2001)
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well. The strengthening of an extreme right-wing nationalist mentality in large parts of Europe, which is now also gripping a core country such as France to an ominous degree, is a product of the people looking to adopt a pseudo-nationalist posture. It reflects the absurd notion that the states of Europe would be capable themselves of providing answers to global challenges. Fears are also freely stoked by pointing out the gap in prosperity which still exists in Europe in an attempt to pull the political rug out from underneath solidarity which is genuinely needed. The fact that there are gaps in prosperity within our nation states is also omitted. Each year 13 million marriages in Europe are registered between couples of different nationalities and every third child born in Germany today is from a migration background.
There are no longer national solutions in the future In this age of mobility and communication, our nations (which in any case have never been homogeneous since the time they were formed) have begun to change. Keystones such as ethnic origin, language and religion are losing their dominance in relation to the states of Europe. In reality, today we live neither in nations which are firm strongholds of society nor in conditions where our states are capable of acting and surviving alone − but they are at least competitive. None of the current discussions going on these days about a possible transfer society in Europe, the issue of how we deal with refugees at various European borders, the reckless gambling with treaty issues, such as the Schengen Agreement, serve to resolve a single problem, let alone set the new directions we need for the future. They only serve to abet destructive forces: the die-hards who are jeopardising the legacy of the last 65 years and want to catapult Europe back into the first half of the 20th century.
