Europe

Approaching a 50th birthday

Feb 22nd 2007
From The Economist print edition

Photographer's Choice

Birthday blues

LATE next month Europe's political leaders will meet in Berlin to mark the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. Today's European Union sprang directly from that treaty. An economic club that began with six members has grown into a far-reaching political entity that has 27 members, 500m inhabitants and constitutes the world's biggest economic and trading block.

Reaching 50 ought to be a joyous occasion. Yet no celebration in Berlin can hide the fact that the EU is in something of a mid-life crisis. For most of the past decade its economic growth has been feeble and its unemployment unacceptably high. Nobody knows where to draw its boundaries. And since France and the Netherlands voted “no” in two referendums in 2005 it has been unable to agree on its own constitution. Enthusiasts hope that the Berlin reunion will lead to a revival of that plan. They are deluding themselves.

A flood of books, articles and broadcasts is expected to mark the 50th birthday. This is not, in fact, such a book. A Dutch journalist and historian, Geert Mak, spent the last year of the 20th century travelling around the continent for his newspaper, NRC Handelsblad. His musings were gathered into a book that became a bestseller in the Netherlands in 2004. Now the publishers have had the bright idea of bringing out an English translation just before the Rome treaty anniversary.

Mr Mak does indeed tell of the origins of the EU, notably by drawing on the words and wisdom of Max Kohnstamm, a Dutchman who worked closely with Jean Monnet, the project's French founding father. But his book is really a broader travelling history of the whole of Europe's 20th century. As befits a journalist with an eye for bad news, he also has much more to say on its calamitous first half than on its more successful second half.

Mr Mak's travels start in the capitals that glittered so brightly in the early 1900s: Paris, Berlin, Vienna, St Petersburg, London. This was a time when Europe seemed unchallenged in its prosperity and leadership. But much of this was thrown away in the mud, filth and death of what the author calls the war of 1914-45. Mr Mak tells this part of his story vividly and in great, gory detail, moving from grim fields of battle (Verdun, Stalingrad) to stirring places of revolution (Petrograd, Berlin), and on to ghastly charnel-houses of death and destruction (Auschwitz, Dresden).

Through the book runs one powerful common strand: nationalism and the end of Europe's multi-ethnic way of life. Mr Mak finds a telling quote from Hitler, who declared that “the essence of Europe is not geographical but racial.” The first world war did for the continent's three great multinational empires: the Habsburg, the Russian and the Ottoman. The cataclysmic 1939-45 war destroyed much of what was left, killing along the way as many as 40m people in Europe, including 6m Jews.

Mr Mak rightly plays up the centrality of the two world wars to Europe's 20th century. As he notes, it is not possible to appreciate the forces that play out in eastern Europe or the Balkans, say, without a comprehensive understanding of these regions' experience in the second world war, and the cold war that followed. This is also why he devotes less space to Britain and France than to places farther east.

It is equally impossible to grasp the origins of the European Union without dwelling on the two wars. The founders wanted above all to avoid repeating the experience of the first half of the century. Monnet and his fellows were convinced that nationalism lay at the root of Europe's troubles. Their answer was to lay the foundation stones for a supranational state.

Yet the tension between nationalism and supranationalism was there from the start. Charles de Gaulle, with his fierce attachment to France, was in some ways the first Eurosceptic. He was also deeply suspicious of British intentions towards the European project, because Winston Churchill once told him that he would always choose the open sea over Europe.

Euroscepticism has increased over the past decade, and is now found even in the 12 countries that have joined the EU since Mr Mak first wrote his book. Yet as he explains in an epilogue added in 2006, the problems of the EU run deeper than just coping with Euroscepticism. Young Europeans do not fret over the risk of another war, so that part of Monnet's dream means nothing to them. Instead they see a remote, bureaucratic and in some ways undemocratic organisation—and not one that offers them a dream at all. No constitution will change that, something the leaders who will be gathering in Berlin would do well to realise.




“总有一天，到那时，……，所有的欧洲国家，无须丢掉你们各自的特点和闪光的个性，都将紧紧地融合在一个高一级的整体里；到那时，你们将构筑欧洲的友爱关系……”                             

                                                          ——维克多·雨果 

1957年3月25日,罗马条约(Treaties of Rome) 在柏林由六个国家签署.这六国分别是 Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and West Germany. 该系列条约促成了 European Economic Community (EEC) 欧洲经济联盟和European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) 欧洲原子能共同体.

其实,早在1951年,这六国就已经签署好了巴黎条约(Treaties of Paris),成立了一个欧洲钢煤共同体(ECSC). 后来这三个组织(EEC,Euratom, ECSC) 就构成了现在欧洲联盟的核心机构.

后来随着欧盟组织的完善,成员国的不断加入,欧盟已经不仅局限于西欧强国,也吸纳了中欧和东欧国家.今年1月1日,第27个成员国--斯洛文尼亚也可以享受到欧盟带来的好处了.说到好处,欧盟现有的三根支柱:经济联盟和货币政策、内政和司法, 以及共同的外交防务和一部欧盟宪法, 使它变成了世界上一体化程度最高的区域集团(supranational zone),在防范金融危机,形成统一大市场等等方面都将大大的降低风险.

二战后欧洲社会的主流国家德国被击败和占领，而英国是战胜国，这使英国人感到骄傲，skepticism也由此滋生出来. 本文作者描述了两次世界大战中欧洲的腥风血雨,(the centrality of the two world wars to Europe's 20th century)提到了charnel house停尸房,集中营, 和grim battle fields,以及令人头晕目眩的stirring revolutions. 所以作者把目光更多的投向了东欧国家(devote less space to Britain and France than to places farther east). 因为这些国家play out in eastern europe or the Balkans (构成了破坏东欧和巴尔干地区的轴心国家)


欧洲人有失去自我特性的危险。1946年，英国首相丘吉尔率先提出，我们需要建立起“某种类似于欧洲合众国的东西”。1959年，戴高乐在斯特拉斯堡曾发表了一个有关欧洲前途的著名讲话，他提出，欧洲的真正统一意味着建立一个“从大西洋到乌拉尔的欧洲”。他还强调：“要使欧洲成其为欧洲，必须有重大的变化。首先苏联不复是现在这样的苏联，而成为俄国。……这个提法只是一种历史的预见。” 历史的发展证实了戴高乐这个惊人的历史预见。冷战结束为欧洲统一提供了历史机遇，中东欧国家提出“回归欧洲”，人们开始谈论“大欧洲”的问题，前苏联领导人戈尔巴乔夫就提出了“全欧大厦”的设想。“大欧洲”的范围基本上与欧洲的文化与地理范围相吻合，就是戴高乐所讲的从大西洋到乌拉尔的欧洲。


但是对于欧洲是否有必要形成步调一致的联合体,怀疑主义(skepticism)一直在窃窃私语.欧盟国家缓慢的经济增长(feeble economic growth) 迫使欧盟加快东扩的脚步,吸纳新的经济增长力,在新的成员国里面寻找就业机会,已解决unacceptably high unemployment. 东扩还有一个原因,就是现在的成员国都不愿意缴纳高昂的会费,所以迫切需要新的冤大头国家出钱支持欧盟运转.skepticism还认为, 现在成员国众多,声音越来越杂,难以形成统一的意见.05年欧盟宪法在法国和荷兰被referendum(全民公决)否决掉了,英国打着自己的小算盘拒不加入欧元区,一些富的要命的国家比如冰岛挪威之类也懒得归队. 这些都和欧盟一直以来的思路不吻合.


码了这么多字,大家对于欧盟了解应该更多了吧!下面几个小趣闻:

欧盟成员国中有一位土耳其同学, 横卧在亚非欧之间, 也算欧洲成员.

塞浦路斯同学连欧洲国家都不是,也加入了欧盟,因为虽然塞埔路斯在地理上属于亚洲，但是它被国际承认的希腊部分比土耳其更欧洲化，所以它所有的东西都是代表欧洲的，它在希腊相当于是希腊的“台湾”。

相关链接:
http://news.sohu.com/20070226/n248344749.shtml

http://www.zaobao.com/special/newspapers/2005/06/homeway050605a.html





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