United Europe facing the changing world
24-25 June 2004
Munich
Just over a month from the enlargement of the European Union to 25 member states and a few days after the European elections the World Political Forum, in collaboration with the Foreign Affairs Association, hosted a convention entitled “United Europe facing the changing world” in Munich.
Speakers including Willem Duisenberg, Lionel Jospin, Gyula Horn, Woijech Jaruzelski and Fabrizio Palenzona gathered to discuss the perception of the concept of a common political and constitutional identity and the international role of the new political entity that was still eclipsed by an image of a serious lack of unity in terms of foreign policy and security. The need of integration on a purely political level was borne out by the heavy abstention which characterised the first European elections in the eight countries from the former Warsaw pact, and the marked divide into two opposing fronts with regard to the military intervention in Iraq. The eastward expansion represents the test bed for European community policy, which hinges on the consolidation of its political stability. And this consolidation necessarily entails not only the creation of an economic identity, but also a single institutional identity, and the search for a mission that over 400 million European citizens can identify with.
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