1998' The Hague Congress:
History, where are you ?

Going to the Congress of Europe, second in this century, it is easy to measure how important was this event. Furthermore, when you list the number of european institutions coming from the original meeting of 1948 - European Movement, Colleges of Europe, etc. -, then what happend in the Capitale of The Netherlands 50 years ago is a real storm.

But 1998's meeting wasn't a commemorative one. The 2000 youngs who came, made the trip more to draw the shape of their desired European Union than to celebrate how brite were the "Fundation's Fathers" Jean Monnet, Winston Churchill, Paul-Henri Spaak or Alcide de Gasperi. Most of those youngsters were members of european student NGOs as AEGEE, SUBWAY, USE or YEF. Some, fewer, were individuals studying in Collèges d'Europe or having a stage in an european institution. The political background was quite large. As young European we kept in mind where do we come from. So, the main issue was to convince political leaders to take in account what are the claims of the younger part of the 370 millions inhabitants of the EU.

 Four workshops dealt with:

Democraty and Human Rights

Social & Economical Dimension of Europe

Multicultural Dimension and

Europe in the World.

All were based on report drafted by the European Movement. Most of them weren't contentious apart one. The discussion within the second workshop was pretty hard. Representatives in charge of the negotiation of the report disagreed since the early beginning on the content of it. Finally, the Chair was obliged to present two report instead of one. What was the disagreement about ?The debate introduced by Mr. Daniel Cardon de Lichtbeur, was in a very liberal fashion. According to him, the various challenges Europe has to face will be globalisation and EU Enlargement. The main critic is that he considered the social question as a secondary. Georges Debunne, former president of ETUC had to desolidarized himself to this view. He replaced the debate on social policy on the forefront as expected. Most of those who took the floor on behalf of NGOs told their fear about what is going on at the european level. ATD-Quart Monde expressed how deep were their feeling of desillusion after the results of the Amsterdam Treaty. Good in itself but still too weak in social matter.

The questions were to ask when EU will deal with european social partners or to claim qualified majority vote for social matters. 

We strongly supported them as we critized the liberal surrounding anthem song by young entrepreners' representative or by the brother of the former french Président de la République, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. According to them, globalisation, Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) or the New Transatlantic Marketplace Agreement (NTM) initiated by Commissioner Leon Brittan, were positive challenges and EU has to break down all the social net to be competitive. Competitivity was a leitmotiv but at any moment they have acknowledged that better social standards could improve and increase this competitivity. 

The Resolution discussed and adopted is pretty weak if compared to main NGOs claims. The Hague Congress only recommanded to gather Law experts to submit the European Council some constitutionnal proposals. Despite Jo Leinen, president of the Union of European Federalists (UEF) and SPD speaker in Saarland's Landstag, enthusiastic speech fundamental institutionnal reform was a light wisper. Even Jacques Delors stopped to talk about "Unified Europe". In his mouth, EU should be in the future a "Federation of Nation's States". Taste the difference !

After the Cardiff Summit where the Future of the European Institutions was put on the political agenda and, seen in perspective, The Hague Congress could be considered as a starting point. Notre Europe - Jacques Delors association - made some interesting proposals coming from it. We have to look very carefully about what could be the further developpments of this debate. In that way, Chirac-Kohl letter for Cardiff Summit has to be taken for what it is : a try to limit the stream for an Other Europe, a social and Unified Europe. 

At the opposite, we, students of Europe have the responsability to put the spotlight where it hurts: on social issues, on federal issues.