Editorial: 60 Years since the First European Community - Reflections on Political Messianism

Abstract

The European construct has played a decisive role in the history of the last 60 years. It has created the framework for post-war reconstruction and has ingeniously provided the inspiration and mechanisms for a historical reconciliation between nations which hitherto had gone to war with each other � the horrors of which surpass even the worst of today's excesses � in every generation for the previous two centuries. This cannot but give inspiration and a sliver of hope in the face of our own intractable conflicts. The European Coal and Steel Community, the 60th Anniversary of which we mark this year, incorporated the Schuman Declaration and combined peace and prosperity in its blueprint, whereby peace was to breed prosperity and prosperity was to consolidate peace. It has all worked out splendidly � revisionist history notwithstanding. Europe has also been a catalyst (not more) � at times the �prize� � for the achievement and subsequent consolidation of democracy, first in Greece, Spain and Portugal, and later across Eastern Europe. It is against this most consequential background that we must assess the current circumstance of Europe. It is at a nadir which one cannot remember for many decades and which, various brave or pompous or self-serving statements notwithstanding, the Treaty of Lisbon is not about to redress. Let me mention what in my view are the three most pressing and profound manifestations of the current weakness, some would say crisis, of Europe. 1. Democracy, or rather the partial absence of which, continues to beset the Europe of 27. The manifestations of the so-called Democracy Deficit are persistent and no endless repetition of the powers of the European Parliament will remove them. In essence it is the inability of the Union to develop structures and processes which adequately replicate at the Union level even �