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Joschka Fischer, The nation-state is irreplaceable
Page 4
European integration has proved phenomenally successful. The whole thing had just one decisive shortcoming, forced upon it by history: it was not the whole of Europe, but merely its free part in the West. For fifty years the division of Europe cut right through Germany and Berlin, and on the eastern side of the Wall and barbed wire an indispensable part of Europe, without which European integration could never be completed, waited for its chance to take part in the European unification process. That chance came with the end of the division of Europe and Germany in 1989/90.
Robert Schuman saw this quite clearly back in 1963: "We must build the united Europe not only in the interest of the free nations, but also in order to be able to admit the peoples of Eastern Europe into this community if, freed from the constraints under which they live, they want to join and seek our moral support. We owe them the example of a unified, fraternal Europe. Every step we take along this road will mean a new opportunity for them. They need our help with the transformation they have to achieve. It is our duty to be prepared."
Following the collapse of the Soviet empire the EU had to open up to the east, otherwise the very idea of European integration would have undermined itself and eventually self-destructed. Why9 A glance at the former Yugoslavia shows us the consequences, even if they would not always and everywhere have been so extreme. An EU restricted to Western Europe would forever have had to deal with a divided system in Europe: in Western Europe integration, in Eastern Europe the old system of balance with its continued national orientation, constraints of coalition, traditional interest-led politics and the permanent danger of nationalist ideologies and confrontations. A divided system of states in Europe without an overarching order would in the long term make Europe a continent of uncertainty, and in the medium term these traditional lines of conflict would shift from Eastern Europe into the EU again. If that happened Germany in particular would be the big loser. The geopolitical reality after 1989 left no serious alternative to the eastward enlargement of the European institutions, and this has never been truer than now in the age of globalization.
Cf. Morgenthau, The German Character * Le mémorandum d'Alexis Leger * The Briand Memorandum * Kalergi, European Spirit must Precede Europe's Political Unification * La Construction de l'Europe selon Jean Monnet * Plan Fouchet * L'Union Européenne selon Altiero Spinelli * Mitterrand and Kohl urge European Political Union * Il Manifesto di Ventotene
