|
|
|
1987/89
|
|
|
|
The Single European Act, the text we spoke about in the previous episodes- which allows the implementation of a common market, within which there is a free circulation of services, capital and people- is enforced in July 1987. So in this Community, that is by now composed of 12 countries (since Spain and Portugal have joined too), the Single European Act is introduced. Thanks to this Act, the European Community understands that the European industry and the European economic system must be more competitive. This is due also to the fact that the competitors make it essential to invest; industry and economics must not only risk, but also make a bigger investment on research, on innovation and more employment. Since the enforcement of the Single European Act in July 1987, it had been clear that we could speak of a Common Market, but only with the perspective of accompanying or make it be followed by the implementation of an Economic and Monetary Union. Economic and Monetary Union means something that we have experienced in all of our countries; it is possible to think of a common market provided that within this market there is a common currency. So it was an oldest idea than the Single Act, dating back to the end of the Fifties: the idea of giving the European Community also a common currency. So already starting from a few months after the enforcement of the Single European Act, the Treasury ministers first and some great characters afterwards, such as Valery Giscard D'Estaing or Giulio Andreotti or even some other characters coming from other European countries, launch the idea of opening a new negotiation among the different Governments in order to implement the Economic and Monetary Union. These negotiations, that substantially have an economic nature, but a political objective, start in a period in which there is something changing in the countries under the Soviet imperialism: for example, the arrival of Mikhail Gorbaciov in the Soviet Union, the labour and cultural movements in Poland, under the leadership of the worker Walesa and the revolts of the intellectuals in Czechoslovakia, such as Havel. On the whole, all these countries are sending some important messages to the western countries: messages coming from people that have understood that it is high time, for them too, to enter the European democracy. When the Governments decide to implement the Economic and Monetary Union, the barriers that separate western Europe from eastern Europe gradually start to break up. Finally we arrive to that important moment of summer and then fall of 1989, when thousands of cars of citizens coming from Western Germany, passing through Hungary and Austria arrive to Eastern Germany and on 9 November 1989, the Berlin wall eventually falls down. So, with the fall of the Berlin wall and with the so-called “velvet revolutions” in the countries under the Soviet imperialism, another phase of the history of the European integration begins, in which everyone understands that the economic and monetary Union must be accompanied also by the implementation of that political union that had been proposed by Altiero Spinelli. So in December 1990 in Rome (in the same town in which the Rome Treaties were signed in 1957), a negotiation among the different Governments starts, in order to jointly realise the Economic, Monetary and political Union.
|
|
