The European experiment: the interplay between economic success and cultural diversity.

• Author: Issing, Otmar

The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union is recognition of the longest period of peace in Europe. The first half of the last century was marked by the atrocities of two wars. In the second half, European integration has culminated in the peaceful cooperation of what is now twenty-seven countries with 500 million people. This makes European Union the most successful integration project in the history of mankind. (The pax romana was imposed by force on other countries.) This assessment is not impaired by the fact that the establishment of democracy in most countries and NATO has also played a role.

The idea of introducing a single currency has a long history. In the first concrete approach, back in 1969 at the Hague summit, government leaders commissioned a plan for the creation of an economic and monetary union in several stages. Under the "Werner Plan" as it was known, this project was to be completed within ten years. Any such visions were very quickly ended by exchange rate turbulence and currency crises in several member states. Some twenty years later, however, there seemed to be a need to complement the single internal market in the monetary sphere, following the motto "a single market--a single currency."

CAN MONETARY UNION WORK WITHOUT POLITICAL UNION?

It was not economics, however, but politics that was the main driving force behind the creation of a common currency. For then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, giving up the deutschmark was the political signal for Germany's final, irreversible anchoring in Europe. In his statement to the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament, on November 6, 1991, Kohl emphasized: "It cannot be repeated often enough. Political union is the indispensable counterpart to economic and monetary union. Recent history, and not just that of Germany, teaches us that the idea of sustaining an economic and monetary union over time without political union is a fallacy."

At the start of monetary union on December 1, 1999, of course, political union was no nearer to being established, nor was there even any discernible intention of doing so. This raised the question: Could monetary union work--could it survive--without political union? Doesn't the current crisis seem to prove right all those who see this as the very heart of all problems, regarding the start of monetary union without the foundation of political union as the "original sin"? What could be more obvious, therefore, than to remedy this shortcoming now and stride determinedly towards full political integration?

AN ARDUOUS PATH

Admittedly, the process of European integration since World War II has repeatedly drawn new strength in times of crisis. Every crisis presents an opportunity to reflect on what went wrong, in order to do things better in future. But are the problems really the fault of "not enough Europe"? Far and wide, the rallying call is that the crisis shows we need "more...