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Here we are in 1950, and, we can say, we enter the creative period of European Union. We mention a date, 9 of May 1950, it’s the day of the famous announcement by Robert Schuman, French Foreign Minister, known as “Schuman declaration”. I take three quotations from it:” Europe can’t be built at once, neither all together, it will rise from concrete realizations creating a factual solidariety”; “ the European Union insist on the elimination of the opposition between France and Germany”; “in order to do this, French government propose to put the whole French-German coal and steele production under a common authority, within an organization opened to the patrecipation of the other European countries”. This choice seems to be inadequate, the market option, preferred at least at a first moment rather than more compelling options , of defence policy or policy tout-court, but its meaning is extraordinary. Negotiations started among the six European countries, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Luxemburg. Less than one year after Schuman declaration , on the 18 of April 1951, the E.C.S.C. treaty was signed, which is itself, even from the institutional point of view, the first embryo of what will be, 50 or 60 years later, the European Union. But I would like to remind even now the preamble, a famous sentence in the preamble of the E.C.S.C treaty:” The representatives of the coutries”, it says “willing to substitute the ancient hostilities with a fusion of their main interests, to build, with the instauration of an economic community, the first foundations of a wider and deeper community among people who have been hostile for a long time because of bloody divisions, and to affix the bases of institutions able to address an already shared destiny”. I would like to remind that three men stands at the bases of this project, and above all, they are border men: Schuman, Alsatian, Adenauer, Rhenish, e De Gasperi, Trentine. Besides, they have in common German language. E.C.S.C. project started, European community for coal and steal was born, but the community initiative spread very soon. It spreads because E.C.S.C. success leads to more ambitious goals. In 1952, when E.C.S.C. treaty didn’t come into force yet, someone aims to something more, a second treaty is signed, E.D.C. treaty, Eauropean Defence Community. Moreover in this treaty we can foresee the first configuration of a political union. But all this enormously forerun the facts, and forerunning the facts, as it’s well-known, doesn’t fit to history plans. E.D.C. treaty wasn’t ratified in 1954, in August, by the National French Assembly. Everithing stops, but the E.C.S.C. still remain and it seems to me this is the starting point in order to look at the following occurrences of 1957. Let’s remember these three big charachters: Adenauer, Schuman and De Gasperi. I have a personal memory of De Gasperi: in 1952 he was talking to the leaders of his party, he was talkind about time and said:” There’s a chronological time, a psychological time, and then, there’s a political time with its own rules. Well I tell you now it’s time for Europe”. And I would also like to narrate another memory about the friendship between France and Germany: Kohl, in 1990 came to the Commission, in Bruxell, in order to plead the cause of German unification. At a certain point he said:” If someone among you ask me about my religious faith, I wouldn’t have torubles in saying I am Roman Catholic, I hope I’ll die as a Roman Catholic; but my political faith, maybe you could think my political faith is the European Union, no, my political faith is the friendship between France and German. With this I was born and with this I hope to die”. And here’s another little memory of those times: Jean Monnet, the great builder of E.C.S.C institutional architecture and, later, of the other kinds of European integration. Well, in 1953 he went to U.S., he was welcome, acclaimed as a V.I.P., but Egidio Ortona, Itali
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