Basic HTML Version
PAGE 18
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, JULY 22, 1986
I
and a European central bank created. As H. G. Krenzler, Deputy
Secretary-General of the European Commission, told the seminar:
(
,
"We want to create a Europe without frontiers."
-
-� -
-
\
)
Whether that will be fully implemented by 1992 is still in
question, because sovereign states do not like their powers
diluted. Moreover, problems do exist. For example, countries
are unwilling to import each other's unemployment. Nor are all
the states equally keen Europeanists. Least enthusiastic are
Denmark, Greece and the UK.
How can the Community overcome all the fissiparous pressures
and preserve the drive to greater unity? By strengthening its
institutions at the expense of the separate governments: there
is no other way, we were told. The conclusion to be drawn is
that Europeanism is stuck in mia="course.
Governments wiIT
cooperate, but not-fuse•••• ""The inhab
1
tants of the Twelve"are
slowly rel.friqufsliln�heir traditional national loyalties.
They are halfway to becoming Europeans.
The German as an
individual is not any more the wholehearted German patriot that
he was, nor has he yet become a wholehearted European patriot
either. Ideologically he falls between two stools.
That is the European crisis.... Europe is potentially that
third superpower, but will remain diffused and paralysed until
the member-states give up their separate sovereignties.
Wil1
they ever do that? Will the separate parliaments and cabinets
:
in Paris, Bonn, London, Madrid and eight other capitals consent
to become provincial councils, subject to instructions from a
central administration in Strasbourg? Europeanists steer away
from that kind of stark dilemma, they put their faith in
gradualism.
Power will be slowly eroded in the European
capitals, it will slowly accrue in Strasbourg.
A Europe
without economic frontiers (the aim for 1992) will be a halfway
house to a Europe without political frontiers. Will the dream
come true one day? Nobody knows for sure.
But will gradualism suffice--or will it require a common threat to all
Europeans to inspire a greater need for coordinated action? Even then,
(
.
.
prophecy indicates the final union will be a mixture "partly of iron and
partly of clay•••• They will not adhere to one another, just as iron does
· \ not mix with clay" (Daniel 2:42, 43). Or, as journalist Krivine put it:
(� overnments will cooperate, but not fuse."
The Soviet World View
Meanwhile, the Soviets continue to woo the
leadership of Western Europe. When French President Mitterrand went to
Moscow the other day, Mr. Gorbachev repeated his theme, lifted from the
1ips of the late Charles de Gaulle, that a new Europe should stretch
"from the Atlantic to the Urals." President Mitterrand's response to Mr.
Gorbachev was rather dramatic. After refusing to accept Soviet-requested
restrictions on France's growing nuclear force, he said that "it is time
for Europeans to become masters of their own destiny." And just a few
days before, in a speech delivered to a joint session of the British
Houses of Parliament, West Germany's President Richard von Weizsaecker
emotionally posed the question.
"Are we content, to allow others to
dominate both world and European affairs?"