"THE EUROPEAN UNION: CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF PEACE, PROSPERITY AND PARTNERSHIP"
Mattias Sundholm
Deputy Spokesperson for the European Commission to the US
University of Washington
Seattle
29 March 2007

Faculty Members, Students, Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming here today, and thank you for having me. It's the first time I'm in Seattle and on your campus, and I sure hope it's not the last one. I'd like to extend a special thank you to the EU Center of Excellence and Philip Schekleton and Karen Boschker of the Center, and the Center for Western European Studies, for organising and co-hosting this event.

Let me start off by briefly sharing two pictures with you:

1. Some 65 years ago, the world was in flames, to a large extent because of and orchestrated from Nazi-Germany and Berlin. Europeans fought each other, and in the rest of the world people were starving and millions of people died. And this was not the first time the very same European countries were fighting each other; some of them had been in war at least 3 times in the last 75 years. Please keep this picture in your heads for a second.
2. Last summer, the very same country – Germany – and its capital – Berlin – hosted the World Soccer Championships. People came from all over Europe, with the common currency – the Euro – in their pockets, travelling there without passports – because those are not needed in a Europe without borders – and waving their own respective national flags – and this without violence or holding grudge against each other.

Now, how did all this happen, and in only some 50 years? Well, to a large extent it is thanks to an economist from Cognac in France, Robert Schuman, who later became French foreign minister and who said that "Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity." This was a genius idea, because it was at the same time very visionary and very concrete. It made France and Germany – the 2 major warring parties – pool their resources in terms of coal and steel and under supranational control, thereby making it impossible for any of them to start a war again. It was also made possible thanks to great US support, which we sometimes unfortunately tend to forget in Europe. Some years later, on 25 March 1957 in Rome, the same 6 countries – Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Italy – signed the two Treaties of Rome, the Treaty creating a European Economic Community, and the European Atomic Energy Community, or Euratom – which later developed into what today is the European Union.

So before going any further, what is the European Union? Well, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the other day: "The EU is more than about dairy cows and the chemical directive." And one could choose to describe it in legal, economic or political terms. Somebody once described it as an "Unidentified political object." And I guess it is not far from the truth. Regardless of perspective, Europe and the European Union is all of these things – and more. That is perhaps why it is so difficult to explain – also to Europeans. But at the same time, I believe one could simplify things and describe it as a union of values and ideals, perhaps best captured in the words "freedom" and "solidarity."

I have already used images and comparisons, and I will do so once more (please bear with me): The European Union turned 50 the other day (which is why I'm here), and the summit gathering the Heads of State and Government of all of the EU's 27 Member States in Berlin last Sunday was hosted by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She was brought up in East Germany, and could not leave her country during the Cold War because of the Berlin Wall, which divided the German capital. Now, this last Sunday, she stood just a few blocks from the very place where the Wall used to be, gathering her European colleagues in a free and undivided Europe. Another example: The President of the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, José Manuel Barroso, grew up in Portugal during the dictatorship. As a teenager in the early 1970s, he couldn't read the books he and his fellow students wanted to read, or write the articles they wanted. They were denied this possibility. This all changed when the dictatorship ended and the country eventually joined what today is the European Union. As President of the European Commission, he oversaw the enlargement of the Union to include 10 new members in 2004 and another 2 this year, most of them former communist dictatorships under Soviet influence.

This brings me to the perhaps biggest or second-biggest success story (after producing peace on the continent) of European integration in the last 50 years: Enlargement. Not only has the European family grown from the original 6 countries in 1957 to 27 countries today – and several hopefuls waiting in line. But at each point in time have the existing members of the Union accepted further enlargement, because no country could join without the unanimous support of all existing members. And this is a unique feature of the European experiment – because it is an experiment – namely the transformative power of Europe.

The European Union does not have its own army or police, and it does not force any country in the region to join or change – this is something the neighbouring countries choose to do themselves, all in the hope of one day being eligible for membership. And this is not an easy task. Every European country that wishes to join has to subscribe to the principles of the European Union, enshrined in its treaties. These specify that the country has to respect democracy and fundamental human rights, and every applicant has to fulfil the so-called Copenhagen criteria. These are of 3 different kinds: political, economic and the adoption of the existing EU legislation. The political criteria we've already touched upon; the economic criteria specify that the country must be a market economy able to handle competitive pressure; and the legislation part is perhaps the toughest challenge, because it means that the applicant has to adopt and integrate 50 years of legislation, amounting to some 80,000–90,000 pages touching upon virtually all aspects of society. So you can see that it is not something which is done in a couple of weeks, but rather something which takes years or even decades. And despite this, all Member States have been, and several potentials are, willing to do so. And the attraction is still there. Presently we have 3 countries – Turkey, Croatia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – which are official applicant countries, with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and possibly Ukraine and Georgia in line further ahead.

Now, one might ask why we are so picky about who can join and so demanding in terms of what needs to be fulfilled to be eligible for membership. Well, both because the present European Union has taken 50 years of careful engineering to develop and because of the Union's very nature; joining the EU is not the same thing as joining the United Nations or the World Trade Organization, but an intimate web of relationships, beliefs and ideals – and regardless of a country's size, it will have a considerable say at the decision-making table and will thus make an impact on the domestic policies of all Member States. That is why we have to make sure that the country is willing and able to undertake those sorts of efforts and sacrifices needed, and will be a responsible member once inside.

The title of this speech is "The European Union: Celebrating 50 Years of Peace, Prosperity, and Partnership." I have – I hope – touched on the peace aspect, which is the very foundation of the Union's existence. This brings me to the other 2 – Prosperity and Partnership – which are clearly linked. Given the extensive focus on and coverage of the rise of India and China in the world economy, one could assume that these countries' size in terms of GDP and trade is much bigger than it is; I won't bore you with facts and figures, but I do find a couple of statistics striking: the EU's investments in Texas alone – it is a big state, but still just one of 50 states – is bigger than US's investments in Japan and China taken together. The EU and the US together represent roughly 12 percent of the world's population, account for roughly 40 percent of world trade and 60 percent of world GDP. The EU's internal market is the world's biggest: the EU has 490 million citizens and 23 different languages; and the EU economy is today the world's biggest, with the US economy as a close runner-up. Taken together, trans-Atlantic trade is responsible for the creation of 14 million jobs on both sides of the Atlantic.

The US and the European Union share the same ideals. We accomplish great things when we work together. And the European Union is increasingly pulling its weight also on the world stage: we contribute with 80 percent of the troops to the NATO mission in Afghanistan, and EU development assistance to the world's poor and suffering represents almost 60 percent of the world's total official development assistance. In Iraq, the EU is helping to rebuild a state built on the rule of law. An EU military force took over from NATO a couple of years ago to be in charge of stabilisation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Faculty members, students, ladies and gentlemen, it is true that European integration and the European Union are not without problems or challenges. But I do believe that, rather than only focusing on these issues, we must sometimes take a step back and consider everything that has indeed been achieved, and I think that the 50th anniversary is a great opportunity to do so. The Founding Fathers called for "an ever closer union among the European peoples," and I don't think they realistically believed we would have come this far. Because, after all, 50 years is not a very long time. I don't mean for us to be bragging or suggesting that the European way of doing things is the best or the only one, but I do think that we should be proud of what we have achieved – together as Europeans and together with the US. Given what we have managed over the last 50 years, what couldn't we achieve over the next 50 if we really commit to it?

I'll stop here and am happy to take any questions that you might have. Thank you very much.