Half a century after the six founding member states signed the Treaty of Rome to launch what was then the European Economic Community the extraordinary success of this endeavour sometimes obscures the enormously difficult circumstances in which it began and which, at regular intervals, have attended the European Union’s most important milestones.
The European Union has evolved in part as a result of war, as well as economic and social breakdown. This fact has a direct bearing on the efforts of the peoples of the Western Balkans to draw closer to the European Union and in due course to become members.
The EU countries – and this is nowhere more true than in the cases of the founding states – have transformed what were far from promising economic and political prospects half a century ago. That transformation was not passive but active. Each of the founding member states experienced radical political and social change during the past 50 years; each faced enormous economic challenges, particularly in the early years, and each had to make hard choices about its status as a nation state in order to integrate with one another more effectively and more productively.
In retrospect, the success of the European Union, a community of prosperous democracies stretching from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, may appear to have been historically pre-ordained. But it was not. It was, and remains, a remarkable story of triumph being extracted – often against very long odds – from adversity.
When the Treaty of Rome was negotiated in the mid 1950s, essential items in Western Europe were still subject to rationing; medical and social services were rudimentary; poverty was endemic; and citizens lived in fear that the end of the world war just over a decade earlier had been a remission in rather than a conclusion to the century’s – and the continent’s – recurringinstability and conflict.
Those circumstances have been changed by the European Union’s confidence in and fidelity to the founding principle enshrined in the Treaty of Rome – freedom of movement of goods, services, capital and people. Implicit in this principle is the essential truth that all citizens of Europe are equal under the law.
Today’s Europe of 27 has kept faith with the Europe of 6. The European Union is not an exclusive club – it is an inclusive community of nations that have overcome, and continue to overcome, enormous obstacles in order to build prosperous and democratic societies.
There is no first-class or second-class citizenship. We are all Europeans, and the natural home of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its neighbours is – geographically, culturally, politically, economically and socially – within the European family.
As in the case of the 27 member states, integrating in the European family cannot be undertaken passively. It must be done actively.
This is the message which we, the representatives of the founding member states, wish to convey today, the 50th anniversary of this watershed in Europe’s post-war recovery, to the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Europe will keep faith with the four freedoms enshrined in the Treaty of Rome, and with the commitment explicitly made to the peoples of the Western Balkans at Thessalonica in 2003. Bosnia and Herzegovina has a willing partner in its efforts to join the European Union. Europe will not stand passively by; it will continue actively to assist.
The European Union – through its member states represented by the Presidency, the European Commission, EUFOR, the EU Police Mission and the Office of the EU Special Representative – is today a tangible and substantial presence in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This presence is not provisional nor is it ambivalent. It represents an expression of confidence in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s future within the European Union.
In the near term, we look forward to the signing of a Stabilisation and Association Agreement as soon as Bosnia and Herzegovina has met the criteria.This will be a major step on Bosnia and Herzegovina’s long journey to our common European home. It is a journey that has already been made, over many years of challenge and perseverance, by the 27 member states, and one that holds out the genuine prospect of a peaceful and prosperous future for all this country’s citizens.
Ambassador Philippe Nieuwenhuys of Belgium
Ambassador Maryse Berniau of France
Ambassador Michael Schmunk of Germany
Ambassador Alessandro Fallavollita of Italy
Ambassador Georges Santer, Secretary General of the Luxembourg Foreign Ministry Ambassador Karel Vosskühler of The Netherlands