European Communities

“ ARTICLE E The European Parliament, the Council, the Commission and the Court of Justice shall exercise their powers under the conditions and for the purposes provided for, on the one hand, by the provisions of the Treaties establishing the European Communities and of the subsequent Treaties and Acts modifying and supplementing them and, on the other hand, by the other provisions of this Treaty.
ARTICLE F 1. The Union shall respect the national identities of its Member States, whose systems of government are founded on the principles of democracy. ”

“ The conduct of some of the European states during our troubles shows the lack of conscience of communities where the responsibility does not come upon a single individual. Seeing a nation that extended from ocean to ocean, embracing the better part of a continent, growing as we were growing in population, wealth and intelligence, the European nations thought it would be well to give us a check. ”

“ The officials and other staff of the European Communities shall form part of the single administration of those Communities and shall be governed by the provisions adopted pursuant to Article 212 of the Treaty establishing the European Community. ”

“ The interstate character of ‘European’ international law can be understood only if the spatial order that underpinned it is acknowledged. The Old World of Europe, where states recognised each other as sovereign equals, relied on its differentiation from the New World where, for most of political modernity, no communities were recognised as sovereign and where the law of ‘civilisation’ did not apply. ”

“ In today’s world, where more or less the entire globe is parcelled into nation-states, the EU appears as an exception and a mystery; somehow ‘more’ than an international organisation yet ‘less’ than a new sovereign state.
Yet this global legal order is, in historical terms, recent. For most of modernity, European jurists would have found it absurd to think of political communities outside Europe in terms of sovereignty. [26] Sovereignty only pertained to the world of ‘civilised’, that is, ‘European’ states. ”

“ In a global order no longer centred on European interests guised in the language of universalism, European integration emerged in order to secure European autonomy and European interests as distinct from the hegemonic forces of the new world order. In a new world, where sovereignty became for the first time in history the default for all politically organised communities rather than merely European states and where Europe was no longer the centre of gravity, European integration sought to secure a place for Europe, and European states, in the world. ”

“ This article demonstrates that European integration was an integral part of a broader transformation of the global order after the collapse of European imperialism. The European empires were underpinned by the public law order of Droit Public de l’Europe or Jus Publicum Europaeum, which regulated the relationship between the ‘civilised’, and hence sovereign, European states, as well as their colonial encounter with the ‘uncivilised’ world where political communities could not be considered sovereign. ”

“ Thanks to the yearning for freedom of the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe the unnatural division of Europe is now consigned to the past. European integration shows that we have learnt the painful lessons of a history marked by bloody conflict. Today we live together as was never possible before. ”

“ In contrast with these giant empires, the nation-states of Europe felt themselves out of scale, just as the Italian cities in the sixteenth century must have felt themselves out of scale in comparison with the new nation-states of Spain and France. To achieve the standard of the world-state, to make their own nations the controlling factors in wide dominions which should include territories and populations of varied types, became the ambition of the most powerful European states. A new political ideal had captivated the mind of Europe. ”

“ The forces of regionalism, nationalism, and separatism still dominate European life. But the ideology and techniques of Europeanization are widely recognized, accepted and put into practice. The development of worldism seems to be following a parallel course. ”

“ The more cheering is this one thing, which we do see and know—that its tendency is to a universal European commonweal; that the [102] wisest in all nations will communicate and co-operate; whereby Europe will again have its true Sacred College and council of Amphictyons; wars will become rarer, less inhuman; and in the course of centuries, such delirious ferocity in nations, as in individuals it already is, may be proscribed and become obsolete for ever. ”

“ In this way, European integration emerged as part of the solution to the problem of ‘Europe’ in a world where Europe had been irrevocably deprived of its status as the only place of ‘civilisation’, and hence, sovereignty. ”

“ And that is what the people of Europe, those we represent here, expect from us.
Today we need a stronger Union. Stronger to respond to the longings of the European citizens, to promote the European economy and defend European values. ”

“ Despite the insistence of reason and experience that strength and stability are the result of unity,--tradition, custom and habit have held human society at the level of political, economic and ideological diversity. Nowhere in history is this generalization more emphatic than in the failure of the European standard-bearers of western civilization to replace a millennium of diversity, discord and conflict by a unified, coordinated, co-existing, cooperating European community. ”

“ We are too prone, when we think of the problems of the future peace, to fix our attention almost wholly upon Europe, and, if we think of the non-European world at all, to assume either that the problem is merely one of power, or that the principles which will guide us in the settlement of Europe can be equally applied outside of Europe. ”

“ Let us, whatever we do, fight for and work towards great and sound principles for the European system. The first of those principles which we should keep before us is the principle of nationality— [cheers] —that is to say, not the conquest or subjugation of any great community, or of any strong race of men, but the setting free of those races which have been subjugated and conquered. ”

“ For centuries Europe has been an idea, holding out hope of peace and understanding. That hope has been fulfilled. European unification has made peace and prosperity possible. It has brought about a sense of community and overcome differences. Each Member State has helped to unite Europe and to strengthen democracy and the rule of law. ”

“ What has made the European family of nations an improving, instead of a stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in them, which, when it exists, exists as the effect, not as the cause; but their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals, classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another: they have struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something valuable ”

“ Diversity? Undoubtedly it is correct to say that Europe thrives on its diversity. We want to preserve the differences between our nations, between the regions of Europe, the diversity of languages and mentalities. We cannot and will not harmonize everything which could be harmonized.
Yes indeed, Europe thrives on its diversity. Yet it is also true to say that diversity in itself cannot be the universal European principle which helps us to understand what holds Europe together in its innermost being, what defines its soul. ”

“ Ladies and gentlemen, when you are at home, you will sense that this is the situation for many people in Europe today. They are asking themselves, "What should Europe be?" "Why do we need Europe?" "What holds Europe together in its innermost being?" ”

“ If in 1878, when the European nations suddenly awoke to the importance of the non-European world, they had been able to agree upon some simple principle which would have secured equal treatment to all, how different would have been the fate of Europe and the world! ”

“ We wish that all the peoples of Europe shall become useful and happy members of this new organism.”—Now the future of Europe mainly depends upon the condition of Germany, a country which, by its brutal disregard of European principles, supports the old policy of armed isolation. ”

“ In middle Europe, during the twelve years between 1859 and 1871, the three Powers whose national unity, racially as well as politically, was already achieved at the time of the Congress of Vienna, were brought face to face with three new Powers, united Germany, united Italy, and the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.
The nineteenth century has been called the age of European colonization. Europe began to follow its commerce with other continents by the imposition of its civilization and its political system upon weaker races. ”

“ This immense continent being peopled with elements of European civilization, could not remain a mere appendix to Europe. But when it is connected with Europe by a thousand social, moral, and material ties, by blood, religion, language, science, civilization, and commerce, to believe that it can rest isolated in politics from Europe, would be just such a fault as it was that England did not believe in time the necessity of America's independence. ”

“ But, aside from the fact that in Europe this political and social evolution had taken centuries, there was also the working of the law of the survival of the fittest. In European nations it had been the element, always composite, which deserved to live, that formed the nucleus of a nationality. ”

“ What the Europeans shared with each other, which in their own eyes distinguished them from everyone else and made them capable of ‘discovering’ and ‘civilising’ the rest of the world, was a distinctive kind of consciousness or conscience. ”

“ And the European, proud in his might, in his strength, in his civilization and his humanity, rules arrogantly, blindly, selfishly, egoistically, amidst all the intricate cog-wheels of [151] his authority, which he slips into gear with the certainty of clockwork, controlling its every movement, till to the foreigner, the outside observer, this overlordship of tangible things, this colonizing of territory alien in race and mind, appears a masterpiece, a very world created. ”

“ Distinctions of class, profession, or nationality, entering so largely into European life, separating man from man, lose their hold upon Europeans meeting in the distant East. The great [Pg 288] West, seen at that distance, becomes their common country; they are drawn together by the bond of common views, feelings and modes of thought which obliterate the artificial lines of nationality—nay, they feel for, and treat each other as only blood relations and brothers would in Europe. ”

“ Politicians of all colors are committed to the European project. Carping aside, the countries of central Europe stand to reap significant economic benefits from their EU membership. Still, the outcome of this clash between parochial nationalism and Europeanism is far from certain and, contrary to received wisdom, the process is reversible. ”

“ Whereas the former tend to look on the EU with admiration and excitement as a unique project that has finally managed to transcend the horrors of the nation-state, the latter for the most part maintain that, notwithstanding the significance of the project of European integration and globalisation more broadly, the nation-state remains the most important political unit. ”

“ That which is now revealed has been labouring for more than twelve centuries to manifest itself; this external and apparent community has not always existed; but such has always been, at bottom, the unity of European civilization, that it is impossible thoroughly to understand the history of any of the great modern peoples without considering the history of Europe as a whole, and contemplating the course pursued by humanity in general. ”

“ Almost everything in life looks slightly different from the inside than it does from the outside, as we well know. That goes for all houses, and it is also the case with Europe. From the outside, the European Union is a historic success story without precedent. The European Union is one of the most impressive works of peace on Planet Earth. European unification is a happy achievement for the people of Europe. It safeguards their freedom and paves the way for prosperity. ”

“ OTHER DEFINITIONS "Economic Community", "Coal and Steel Community" and "Euratom" mean respectively the European Economic Community, the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Atomic Energy Community. "Community customs duty" means, in relation to any goods, such duty of customs as may from time to time be fixed for those goods by directly applicable Community provision as the duty chargeable on importation into member States. "Community institution" means any institution of any of the Communities or common to the Communities ”

“ That meant that the small nations must have as good a title as the large ones to a place in the sun, and finally the establishment of a real European partnership, based on the recognition of equal right and established and enforced by a common will. ”

“ But in the first place we have learnt by a very long experience that in lands inhabited by European settlers, who bring with them European traditions, the only satisfactory solution is to be found in the concession of the fullest self-governing rights, since these settlers are able to use them, and in the encouragement of that sentiment of unity which we call the national spirit. ”

“ But on the other hand, the intelligent European is up against the unity of Europe problem night and day. Europe cannot go on. European civilization cannot go on, unless that net of boundaries which strangles her is dissolved away. The difficulties created by language differences, by bitter national traditions, by bad political habits and the like, are no doubt stupendous. ”