Presentation of "The Schuman Report on Europe: the state of the Union 2011"

On the 19th April "The Schuman Report on Europe: the state of the Union 2011" was presented in the European Parliament. The reference-work of the Robert Schuman Foundation, which is at its 5th edition, is being published in cooperation with CES since 2009.

The MEP Jean-Pierre Audy welcomed the participants and introduced the 2011 Report, which gathers contributions by academics but also experts and decision-makers, pointing out the lessons to be learned from the recent economic crisis. According to Mr. Audy, the crisis is also the occasion to progress toward a more deep European integration but at the same time it represents a political challenge for the EU, testing its internal cohesion and its capacity to resist to the pressure of populism and enhance its governance. For that purpose, Europeans have to prove less naive and more realistic.

The chairman of the Robert Schuman Foundation, Jean-Dominique Giuliani, presented the Report as being an objective description of the way the EU is answering to the crisis but also a prospective analysis of the steps to take to face those challenges. In his view, we have above all to reform our communication, the way we speak about Europe, in order to avoid that citizens, mistreated by a globalisation they don’t always understand, accuse the EU to be its Trojan horse. Europhobes populist movements using Europe as a scapegoat are in effect on the rise everywhere.

Tomi Huhtanen, CES Director, pointed out the fact that for the first time the English and French versions of the Schuman Report were issued at the same time, thus giving this launching event a wider scope. The Schuman Report is a good presentation of the economic and political challenges the EU is facing both at the external and internal level, namely the rise of populism which is analysed in the Report by Roland Freudenstein, CES Deputy Director and Head of Research.

Mr. Huhtanen then introduced the last speaker, Hans-Gert Pöttering, who, in addition to being the former President of the European Parliament and Chairman of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, has been one of the founders of CES. Mr. Pottering underlined the importance to have this annual Report named after Robert Schuman, who, with Konrad Adenauer and Alcide de Gasperi, is one of the Founding Fathers of Europe. Citing the famous sentence by one of the other Founding Fathers, Jean Monnet, “nothing is possible without men, but nothing lasts without institutions”, Mr. Pöttering maintained that the EU has to be built through the institutions and not in an intergovernmental way. Finally, he stated that the Arab revolutions are a great opportunity for the EU, who has to make sure that they will develop in accordance to the democratic values that the EU is promoting.