THE UNITING OF EUROPE AFTER NICE
A vision of Europe presented by the President Milan Kucan at the International Bertelsmann Forum

Berlin (Germany), 19 January 2001


Allow me first of all to say that to me EU enlargement constitutes first and foremost a moral challenge for Europe and a test of its historical maturity. That is why I believe the Nice summit was a success. But the Nice summit has brought into sharp focus some issues, which to my mind demand serious consideration, particularly since a united Europe must serve as Europe's own response to globalisation. In the current climate this idea has gained a momentum which cannot be stopped, either by selfish national interests or by the temporary victory of institutional mathematics over political vision. And here lies the opportunity for the candidate countries and for an integrated Europe.

The European summit has fallen short of its goals, at least in terms of institutional reform. Yet from the point of view of the candidate countries, including Slovenia, the summit's achievement is in no way bad. The door to the Union has now been properly opened to them, and the prospect of actually electing members to the European Parliament in 2004 now appears quite realistic. This would seem to mark an end to a kind of “unhealthy preparatory” period, which tied up the candidate countries in bureaucratically complicated and lengthy negotiations, and in bilateral coercion on the part of member states. The candidates grew edgy over the EU’s silence on possible dates for enlargement, and the publication of interim results caused jealousy and unhealthy competitiveness, as though the process was all to do with prestige. In reality it involved for all candidate countries an enormous and complicated process of reform and transformation, in which a high price had to be paid, particularly in social terms. It is time that Europe recognised this. As it has been said, “the best way to do this is to speed up negotiations and set a date for enlargement”. In a certain way this has happened. Indeed the debate over institutional reform, which will no longer be either a condition or an obstacle for accepting new members, should be continued in 2004. Those countries which will have become members by then will therefore already be cooperating in the decision-making on this issue and with it on their destiny. And for us, this is the crux of the matter. This more than anything else we may justifiably expect.

I view the Nice Agreement as a compromise between the interests of the whole and individual benefits. The goals are clear: to go beyond the historical division of Europe through the inclusion of members from the former political East, to maintain functional capability and at the same time enhance the integration of member states, as well as to think like a community. For the moment these goals seem to be overly demanding. It is not possible, measured against the time of historical processes, for the positions of individual EU members to be brought closer together in all respects overnight. This is the reality.

For this reason the Nice summit can also be seen as a kind of renaissance of national egoisms. The European spirit has at times also bowed to national interests. It is therefore all the more justifiable to ask whether the traditional nation-state is even capable of being a subject of European association, since the integration of the old continent is in fact a negation of the absolute sovereignty of the member states. The question is all the more justified now, when the EU is evolving from a former economic community into a political union with functions and offices that are par excellence the attributes of the traditional nation-state. Such functions served to protect the state’s national territory from other states. But that was a time of division, and not a time of integration. Europe’s history has repeatedly manifested division, taken to the absurd through the concepts of blood and earth – blutt und boden - and the right to living space, or lebensraum. The most recent manifestation of this absurdity has been in the latest wars in the Balkans.

The Blutt und Boden formula is the negation of a united Europe. A united Europe can only be a community made up of what are indeed nationally defined and identified states, but which are in essence states of citizens. In other words states that are constituted as communities of citizens, as communities of people who are equal and share equal rights, irrespective of their ethnic, religious, racial or other affiliation.

Within the current and new members a definition is now therefore being made, with equal rights for all, of the new relationship between the dominant national identity and collective rights of ethnic and other minorities. Through the increasingly free flow of people within the whole of the EU in recent times as a result of the great population dynamics, the reasons will become essentially clearer as to why it is beneficial and justified to make a careful distinction between what are called the indigenous ethnic minorities and other ethnic groups and their right and possibility to nurture their individual and collective cultural identity. The transformation of nation-states into citizen-states, with developed and practised multiculturalism, will also lead in the relations between large, medium and small member states to a more productive balance of ethnic and civil interests, and in this way also of the political will and views of the members.

With a rigid understanding of nation-states as the proper homeland only of the members of one ethnic group, integration would be subordinated to the struggle for dominance of the interests of individual states or a group of states. The relations within it would therefore be conflicting. The viability and the strength of the community would depend on the power relationship. It would depend on how far the largest states could identify with the interests of the whole. From this point of view the formula of enhanced cooperation could be a mechanism which objectively tends more towards enhancing cooperation among select groups of states, and less towards cooperation among all for defining and fulfilling the interests of the whole. Will there be sufficient guarantees that this will not lead to renewed divisions in Europe, and to a repetition of history?

The greatest challenge for a greater EU – after enlargement – is consequently how to ensure the coexistence of two elements which overlap only up to a certain point, not always and not necessarily. The first is the strengthening of the capacity for decision-making and of the effective implementation of decisions. And the second is the readiness to adopt decisions which may well reflect the interest of the whole, but do not in every case conform to the interests of every single EU member. Even the system where the most important decisions must be approved by all citizens of the EU or at least by a qualified majority, and this is in principle a qualitative shift in the understanding of the EU as a union of citizens, has an unknown factor built into it. For the moment citizens generally relate to decisions from the Union primarily as citizens of their own countries and only then as citizens of the EU. The state and the nation are historical categories which have their own substance. Is it possible now to go beyond them? The EU must have a very precise answer to this question, and then reckon with reality as it is, in defining its vision. Overlooking the divergence between the real and the desired can be fatal for the future of European integration.

The summit in Nice, perhaps the last of its kind prior to actual enlargement, and also for that reason held in such challenging circumstances, was nevertheless devoted chiefly to urgent institutional reform. In this there was somewhat less evidence of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the probable nucleus of a European constitution. I personally ascribe great weight to this Charter. Not just because of the experience of former Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was in an endless process of institutional change. Through such change, and albeit in entirely different historical circumstances, the multiethnic community of Yugoslavia sought answers to questions that are very similar to those facing the EU today. It fell apart, because there was no integrative idea, no value system or interests of the whole. I regard the Charter as important because it demonstrates to us and other candidate countries from the former political East that the slogans of the 90’s “back to Europe” and “forward to the EU” are not something entirely different. “Back to Europe” expressed at least for the majority an anticipation of and will for freedom, democracy, respect of human dignity and openness. It signified a return from behind the Iron Curtain to our spiritual world of western European civilisation and its values. This Charter, just like the completeness of the European social model, is a confirmation of our expectations that the EU is not simply an amalgamation of states to serve their pragmatic, primarily economic interests. That it is a community of states bound together by the same values and common tragic experience of the catastrophe that can ensue from any flagrant violation or denial of these values. And for this reason I do not believe that the decisions on EU enlargement came about chiefly through some fear of the political consequences of delaying the process for the credibility of the community. I believe that there was an overriding awareness that there can be no peace, security and development, if it is not ensured for everyone in Europe; and for this it is worth sacrificing some national egoism. Everything else is of lesser importance. And for this reason I am, as far as the future of the EU is concerned, an optimist.