How can one summarise this meeting [the Forum de Paris⁽¹⁾]? By getting straight to the point I suppose. And in doing so, I shall make a concise summary of what was accomplished, give an unbiased inventory of the matters discussed and propose some realistic ways to move ahead.

The Present Situation

What Europe has achieved is quite remarkable. As an historian, I would have preferred to hear more discussion on history, since it is in the history of Europe that we see the Herculean character of its construction. By thinking back to the state of Europe at the end of the Second World War, we can see better just how far we have since come. Hubert Védrine rightly reminded us that it is not Europe that has created peace, but rather peace, the Soviet threat and American will that have created Europe. We forget all too easily that both Truman and Stalin are in the forefront of the fathers of Europe. Yet these powerful people’s efforts would have been in vain if the Europeans had not found reasons in their common civilisation to continue their shared adventure. Now that is a very old story which goes back into the depths of time: we did not speak about it, which I find a pity. Perhaps we are ourselves a symptom of this flight from history, this abandonment of the past so criticised by Paul Thibaut in a powerful presentation that provoked lively exchanges. At least we started on the thorny question of identity which affects everyone and, whether we like it or not, leads us back to history.

Does it not follow that he who questions identity, questions borders? For nearly half a century the Iron Curtain, an artificial border of course, albeit covered hedgehog-like with prickles of barbed wire and hence very real, spared Europeans the need to question the limits of their grand plan. It was perhaps not so bad: with one or two deviations this border followed that of the Carolingian Empire. We were among our own kind, sons of the Enlightenment, grandsons of the Roman Catholic, Apostolic Church and part of a feudal, hence contractual, order–direct descendants of a dual Greek and Roman heritage. Thus it was that Europe’s first configuration was conceived by a small club of gentleman democratic Christians and social democrats who were part of this line of descent, and they knew it. And then, as manna from heaven, the Wall collapsed to the cheers of the jubilant crowd. Enlargement was hurriedly enacted: given how long they had been cut off from Europe, how could we refuse these Europeans immediate entry to the club? Some worrying questions had to be asked: how far should this go, and to what end? Pekin Baran appealed to Europeans not to leave their identity locked up in the past. Fathallah Sijilmassi invited them to consider a Euro-Mediterranean identity, something repeated by Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Jacques Attali. Vaira Vike Freiberga implored them not to throw away the key and not to turn Europe into a fortress. To all of these people, Hubert Védrine and Kzrysztof Pomian replied that it all depended on the sort of Europe we wanted to make and, in Pomian’s words, a marketplace Europe could expand infinitely, even to the extent of melting into the World Trade Organisation. A political Europe, Europe as a power (something we will return to later) cannot, for such a Europe needs boundaries. We should not forget that even the United States, which pushes Europe to expand to the horizon and then some, has its own borders (NB one of which is currently being marked by the construction of a wall) and nobody would dream of including Canada and Mexico within them. ‘A border, yes, but following what criteria?’ wondered Jean-Noël Jeanneney. Ethnic? Certainly not. Religious? No again. Economic? Time-limited. What does that leave, then? Secularity, which is synonymous with democracy, and geography. One cannot of course deny that this latter criterion is somewhat arbitrary, but we have to accept that governing people has never been an exact science. According to Cromwell, we never go so far as when we do not know where we are going. Well, it is high time we changed methods and started to know where we are going.