Editor's note: Through the looking glass
Some call it a political crisis, some a leadership crisis. For me it is a crisis of integration - and I'm not saying this just as a citizen of a new EU member state.
The idea of integration - the very basis of the community - came into being in the years when no one even dreamt of the fall of the Iron Curtain or that Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary would become EU members.
It is thanks to the idea of integration that life-long enemies such as France and Germany could be merged into one political organism. It is the idea of integration that helped to create common market, destroy borders and launch the euro.
Where was it born? In the heads of political visionaries. The people who realized bold, historical ideas without taking notice of what societies thought about them.
Societies came to terms with the revolutionary decisions many years later and appreciated the outcomes. Now we are short of visionaries. None of the EU politicians has an idea how to solve the problem that emerged after France and the Netherlands had rejected the constitutional treaty.
It seems that in the course of the fight for their own interests, especially financial ones, everyone forgot about Europe.
We discuss the row between Chirac and Blair, the British rebate dilemma, the stubborn Dutch and the Polish plumber. We do not talk about efforts the new member states had to put into reforms and integration.
We ignore the feelings of those citizens who believed in integration and counted on the welcoming old EU members to keep their accession talks promises.
This political void in the heads of political leaders will probably last longer than a couple of months.
One thing is sure - if the EU is to survive it has to return to the EU sources no matter how painful the return might be. It must return to the idea of integration in a wider meaning of the word. Political integration has already been completed. Now the time has come for societies to integrate.
Eliza Durka
Editor-in-chief
The idea of integration - the very basis of the community - came into being in the years when no one even dreamt of the fall of the Iron Curtain or that Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary would become EU members.
It is thanks to the idea of integration that life-long enemies such as France and Germany could be merged into one political organism. It is the idea of integration that helped to create common market, destroy borders and launch the euro.
Where was it born? In the heads of political visionaries. The people who realized bold, historical ideas without taking notice of what societies thought about them.
Societies came to terms with the revolutionary decisions many years later and appreciated the outcomes. Now we are short of visionaries. None of the EU politicians has an idea how to solve the problem that emerged after France and the Netherlands had rejected the constitutional treaty.
It seems that in the course of the fight for their own interests, especially financial ones, everyone forgot about Europe.
We discuss the row between Chirac and Blair, the British rebate dilemma, the stubborn Dutch and the Polish plumber. We do not talk about efforts the new member states had to put into reforms and integration.
We ignore the feelings of those citizens who believed in integration and counted on the welcoming old EU members to keep their accession talks promises.
This political void in the heads of political leaders will probably last longer than a couple of months.
One thing is sure - if the EU is to survive it has to return to the EU sources no matter how painful the return might be. It must return to the idea of integration in a wider meaning of the word. Political integration has already been completed. Now the time has come for societies to integrate.
Eliza Durka
Editor-in-chief
