EUrope, 50 years old.... What future?

Tomorrow, the European Union will be celebrating its golden jubilee; it has grown out of the European Economic Community, without changing its identity. Its powers have grown well beyond those of a mere common market.

Nevertheless, it has not become the "United States of Europe", in spite of the ardent desire of some of its citizens. It was indeed not the intention of the founding fathers that it should become necessarily a federal state, like the US. Nor is that the intention today despite the commitment in the Rome Treaty to ever increasing integration.

The member states of the European Union do not wish to yield their present individual national competence over all matters that are intimately related to their national identity to any European authority. On the other hand, the European Union is not just an international organisation like the United Nations. The member states have decided to exercise certain sovereign rights (such as over fishing operations) in common much more extensively than other similar regional groupings.

The result is that the European Union is a really unique political entity. It is singularly marked by its application of the principle enunciated in the social teaching of the Catholic Church that has come to be called the "principle of subsidiarity". The authority to decide is to be invested in those levels that are closest to the people most affected by that decision. That is a basic principle of Christian Democracy to which we in Malta fully subscribe.

The European Union, 50 years after the signature of the Treaty of Rome, wants to endorse and even highlight still more the fundamental values it was set up to safeguard. Besides subsidiarity, these include solidarity and proportionality. Thus, if a member state wishes to participate in a common European project (for instance, for environmental protection) but does not have the necessary material means, the Union undertakes to provide them. It also seeks to ensure that a proper balance be kept in the difficult recognition of a double equality: That between citizens and that between states, whatever the size.

The European Union also wants to adopt the application of its basic principles to the vast changes that have occurred over a very eventful half century. Perhaps the most significant change has occurred in the world of work.

The first major European institution of 50 years ago was the Coal and Steel Community as was natural when the main productive activity of Europe was heavy, machine-driven industry. Since then the electronic revolution has taken place. Employment has shifted to the so-called Tertiary Sector of the economy, ranging from tourism to information technology. One reflection of this revolution is the vast increase in importance of the coastal zones of Europe in comparison with the central areas of the continent that had historically been the core of the coal and steel community. The coastal zones have now become the shop-window and interface of Europe with the rest of the world.

Malta has already played its part in helping Europe to develop the awareness of its singular geographical privilege. The sea offers great prospects, challenges as well as dangers, particularly in relation to climate change, for future development.

It used to be thought that identity could only be affirmed and asserted against some other. This belief contributed much to the wars that scourged Europe before the birth of the Union and still did so until very recent in some parts of Europe, which have not joined the Union. Until the end of the Cold War, Western Europe still identified itself by contrast with the undemocratic Soviet bloc. The European Union is now firmly resisting all temptations to assert itself in opposition to anyone else, be it the US or Islam or Far Eastern Tigers. On the contrary, the European Union sees its strengthening as essentially a necessary step towards a free system of world governance.

Freedom under the rule of law is the central characteristic of an identity that Europe has established and intends to develop in the rapidly globalising present environment. Largely thanks to the Union, there is perhaps only one totally totalitarian state surviving within the geographical bounds of Europe. Such a guarantee of freedom under the law has never been available before in the thousands of years of European history.

We have today cause for self-criticism, but undoubtedly greater cause for celebration, all of us who benefit from European togetherness.