When we are asked how it feels like being 50, 60, 70, we tend to reply - in the last case, I suspect, with as much optimism as three score years and ten plus allow - pretty well like any other day. If the European Union could be asked and were it in a position to answer, it may well follow our example. For all growth has one thing in common, the experience of growing up and still not feeling, I was going to say grown-up but that would be a terrible admission, no, still not feeling one's age; a bit of an ache here, where previously there was none, a hint of a pain there, when yesterday there felt perfectly all right, but on the whole, well, thank you; and aches and pains the EU has had.
So there they are today, the leaders of 27 member countries, in Berlin, celebrating the 50th birthday of the Union, which received its kiss of life in 1957 in the wake of the worst half-century in European history; what Niall Ferguson called in a title of one of his books, History's Age of Hatred. Who, one is tempted to ask, could have foreseen such a worthwhile volte-face away from enmity towards a partnership of nations or what should be that?
Quite a few, actually, some of them as far back as 1926, when a Steel Pact was signed by France, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium and what was then the Saar Republic to regulate steel production and prevent excess capacity. Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary joined the following year. It was doomed. The economic crisis of 1929 saw to that.
The Thirties and the advent of Hitler were hardly going to revive it but, curiously enough, in 1940, when Germany invaded France and a Vichy government was installed, a senior administrator in that government foresaw the idea of a post-war European order with a single economy and a single currency, presumably operating under Hitler's diktat; what one historian described as "a sort of updating of Napoleon's Continental System". The 'visionary', Pierre Pucheu, was executed by the Free French.
Perhaps more curious is the fact that, even before the war ended, the exiled governments of the Benelux countries signed the far-seeing Benelux Agreement. This called for the elimination of tariff barriers and, at some unspecified time in the future, the free movement of labour, capital and services between their three countries.
In 1943, an improbable year for optimism, Jean Monnet professed his belief in a European entity that would transform the states of Europe into "a single unit". A year before, Winston Churchill had expressed the hope that the "European family" would unite "under a Council of Europe". And in 1949, a Council of Europe was indeed inaugurated in Strasbourg, where delegates from Britain, Ireland, France, the Benelux countries, Italy, Sweden, Denmark and Norway attended. Note that Germany - West Germany, for the Soviet Union had laid claim to East Germany and an iron curtain had descended separating the west of Europe from its east - was not party to that meeting. France, despite Jean Monnet, would not have it.
Yet in a speech he made in Zurich in 1946, Churchill entertained no doubt that "the first step in the re-creation of the European family must be a partnership between France and Germany". For this to take concrete form was left, initially, to Monnet and French Foreign Minister Robert Schumann (who had served in the German army in 1914!).
The idea was that the abolition of tariff barriers and the free movement of coal and steel between the signatory countries would see the start of a process that would diminish the chances of war breaking out between them.
Hip-hip-...
What came to be known as the Schuman Plan was hatched in 1950. In effect, this provided what was jubilantly recognised by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer as a "breakthrough" for West Germany's entrée into the comity of European nations. Britain declined to join, out of pique (she had not been privy to the Schuman Plan, but the United States had been informed before it was announced) and other considerations. These included its headship of the Commonwealth.
But more interestingly, the idea of a religious divide also hung in the air. Britain and Scandinavia in particular looked with some hostility on this limited attempt at integration; not because of the economic integration per se.
More graphic, perhaps, was the entry in the diary of a senior adviser to Bevin. He noted that while he favoured the integration that was being proposed, the idea might "on the other hand... be just a step in the consolidation of the Catholic 'black international' which I have always thought to be a driving force behind the Council of Europe".
But perhaps the British suspicions formed by a Labour government were even more insular than that. As Herbert Morrison put it at the time "...the Durham miners won't wear it". Euroscepticism has coloured British politics for as long as one can remember, not all of it without basis; a jealous regard for sovereignty, a dislike for the development of a strong central authority that can impose decisions best taken by countries from below on the principle of subsidiarity.
In 1951 the European Coal and Steel Community was formed by France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux. It was not self-evident at the time but, as things turned out, the road to Rome was being paved. So successful was this initial step, the countries sought to come to an agreement that would remove internal barriers altogether, create a common external tariff for goods coming from outside the area, and work towards the free movement of goods and services, money and people. Which is why, 50 years ago today, the Treaty of Rome was signed. The European Economic Community (EEC) was born and became known in 1958 as the Common Market.
One hopes, without a granite conviction, that this will be the case, that time and words will be found today in Berlin to pay tribute to four statesmen, all Catholic, three of them leaders of Christian Democratic parties at the time. They may reasonably be called the Fathers of the European Union - Schuman, Alcide de Gasperi, Adenauer and Monnet. It is of interest and may be seen as of some significance that Schuman is currently undergoing the process of canonisation, the diocesan process having come to its conclusion in May, 2004 - when Malta formally became an EU member. I need not remark that the two events are not linked.
Anybody younger than 50 was not around when the leaders of six countries sat in Rome's impressive Capitoline museum and signed the Treaty of Rome; anybody over 65 was not around for the Allied invasion of Germany; anybody over 70 just about remembers the outbreak of World War II. It was this last exper-ience and the post-war menace posed by the Soviet Union that led statesmen to dream their great dream and worth recalling that this had as its source - a point that millions of Europeans neglect to acknowledge today - the American offer of Marshall Aid in 1947. From this emerged the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation a year later and, as we have seen, a year after that, in 1949, the formation of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
Hip-hip-hip...
The most practical manifestation of a new Europe in search of a fresh identity was, of course, the European Coal and Steel Community. Seven other countries preferred to set up their own organisation, the European Free Trade Association. The majority of these have since joined the EU and nobody mentions EFTA nowadays.
Those were the days when Britain preferred to stand aside. It was not until 1972 that a Conservative government led by Edward Heath nego-tiated her entry, reaffirmed in 1975 under a Labour government headed by Harold Wilson, through a democratic mechanism that the British love to hate - a referendum.
Nobody in the Seventies could have foreseen the direction that would be taken by the march of history after 1980: the death of Brezhnev in 1982 and the slow progress that eventually led to the succession in Moscow of a young man, Mikhail Gorbachev; the visit to Poland of Pope John Paul II (on condition, the Pope insisted, that martial law was lifted and Solidarity supporters freed; it was and they were); the consolidation of a new democracy in Spain and Portugal (they joined the EC in 1986); the dramatic dismantling of Communism in Eastern Europe and the dramatic collapse (but not its death, quite) of the Soviet Union, as its various Republics broke away and reassumed national sovereignty.
The end of the Cold War meant the start of a new Europe, the reunification of Germany, the sight of former Communist states queuing up for membership of the Union - and all this without a single shot being fired, except in Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania, where his attempt to put down uprisings led to the summary execution of the dictator and his wife. Europe became Europe; not overnight, though.
It is well to remember the dragging of feet that took place, in France in particular, before the decision on enlargement was finally taken. Germany was all for swift integration. Britain, for reasons of its own. Enlargement, it was thought there, was likely to weaken the dream of the centralists, strengthen the idea of a looser organisation, a free trade area rather than the leviathan it suspected was being created). It was not until 1997 that Brussels opened the way for ten former communist countries plus Cyprus and Malta to prepare themselves for membership.
Not without pain, but as we kept on telling Alfred Sant when he only saw pain and no gain for Malta in joining Europe, and opposed the idea with as much might and main as he could muster, which did not turn out to be much.
For Malta's membership in 2004, for the security this has given us, for the financial benefits that have been negotiated, the country is indebted to Dr Eddie Fenech Adami's unwavering belief in a project that his party had held since 1979 and now to Dr Lawrence Gonzi, whose task it is to use the ample funds that have been made available to create a modern economy.
The Labour Party, which has this habit of never realising just when it is that the mantle of destiny is draping itself round Malta, worse, never recognising the sweep of history, is now on board the European train. The possibility of derailment that existed prior to the 2003 elections no longer exists. There is much to celebrate today and yet, and yet...
Hip-hip-hip hooray?
How would the Fathers of the Union view the organisation that grew out of their initial dream? With great elation, I imagine, although I suspect they would have blanched at the idea of an acquis communautaire running into 90,000 pages; and profoundly impressed that there has not been a single war on the continent as a direct consequence of the economic interlock that now exists between the countries of Europe. This, when one keeps in mind that over 40 wars have been fought elsewhere, is a splendid achievement in a continent that twice tore itself apart (1914-18, 1939-45).
If the first half of the century saw the near destruction of a civilisation; the second half, operating under the impetus of their farsightedness, witnessed its slow resuscitation. Schuman, De Gasperi and Adenauer would look upon this and find it more than good, the greatest vindication of their efforts. With the absence of military conflict, the march towards a continent without tariffs was made possible; and the free movement of goods, services, labour and capital combined to dispel still further the spectre of war. With all this they would have been mightily pleased.
And they would have given the Union full marks for the creation of a common currency, initially binding those countries who joined the euro to the rigours of a growth and stability pact.
I suspect, however, they would have viewed with considerable trepidation the spirit of secularism and political correctness that informs the Union. The latter reached its all-time high, I was reading, in the decision taken by a London headmistress some years ago to forbid a school visit to a performance of Romeo and Juliet on the grounds that the play was "blatantly heterosexual".
They would also, I imagine, have been shocked that Brussels had linked aid programmes against poverty with "access to abortion" and that the German development minister no less, threatened "consequences if the law (against abortion passed by Nicaragua) is not amended".
And they would certainly agree with the letter published in The Times yesterday, with Vaclav Havel as one of its signatories, castigating the EU for sitting comfortably while Darfur burns (and, they could have added, Zimbabwe).
So, there are areas where their 50-year-old offspring disappoints them. Some of these, like up-down government from Brussels as things turned out, are of their own making. The shambles at Nice in 2000 they would not have foreseen, but its aftermath, an uninspiring Constitution they, too, would have rejected on grounds that would have included their displeasure in a Europe-defining document that deliberately eschewed a reference to Christianity.
And what they would have made of Angela Merkel's decision to celebrate with a 2003 Assmannshausen Hollenberg Spätburgunder is anybody's guess. May be a fine wine but how do you go about pronouncing its name?
If you foisted that on a Frenchman 68 years ago and he indecorously choked on it as he turned the tongue-twister this way and that, the discomfiture to which he was put would have provided a casus belli. Today, the Frenchman may decline to drink it; another casus belli that is no longer one.