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1990/91
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As we said in the previous episodes, Jacques Delors had fixed an objective, a deadline, within which the Common Market should have been implemented, that is 1st January 1992. The Common Market is only partly implemented because, thanks to the break down of the technical and fiscal frontiers also the frontiers concerning the free circulation of goods and especially those concerning the free circulation of capital collapse. Afterwards, with the beginning of the procedure that is going to bring to the economic and monetary liberalisation, we have the first hesitating circulation of services too. By the word “services” we especially mean the banks and the insurance agencies. We can see that up until now the banks, the insurance agencies and the other services that are offered to citizens find it difficult to become competitive in our countries, also because they are very sensible fields in which every nation tries to keep its own national culture unchanged. The other important aspect is that there still were some obstacles among the members of the European Community against a complete and free circulation of people within the different countries. This means that there still were some controls at the frontiers. So, since this objective seemed hard to be achieved, some of the 12 countries that were part of the European Community, decided to meet in a small village of Luxembourg. There met the Ministers of some countries that decided to accelerate this procedure which should allow the free circulation of people, which is not only a symbolic achievement, but is essential to make the citizens feel part of the same community. So in this little village called Schengen an agreement is signed, which gradually allows to eliminate also the controls at the frontiers among the countries that ratified this agreement. At the same time in which this procedure (that represents a consolidation and a symbol of the European citizenship) is approved, another very important event for the history of Europe happens. In a less than a year, between 9th November 1989 and 2nd October 1990, Germany, that had been split by an Iron Curtain (that had also been the cause of many deaths for over 40 years), unifies under the same Government, under the same democracy. So a unified Germany with 85 millions of people enters the European scene and reasonably claims, being a consolidated democracy, to play the role of the protagonist in the history of Europe and in the history of the world too. This role of Germany as a leading character allows- between 1990 and 1991/92- to achieve all a series of important results, from the point of view of the European integration: it allows the enforcement of a Treaty that starts up a procedure that a few years later will bring to the implementation of a common currency; it allows to form the first nucleus of the European citizenship and it allows to lay the cornerstone for the realisation of a foreign policy and of a common security system, in the perspective of consolidating the identity of Europe all throughout the world.
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