THE HAGUE CONGRESS
MAY 1948 - MAY 1998
Why has the International European Movement taken the initiative, along with other Europe–wide organisations, of convening a Congress of Europe in The Hague next May? Very simply because it considers it crucial to contribute to Europe’s new spring. How? By going back to the source of the undertaking of peace, destined for the entire continent and unprecedented worldwide, that was initiated at the Congress of Europe in The Hague in May 1948. Why? Because the ideal and the values that inspired participants at the time have lost none of their strength: they alone will make it possible to build a Europe of the 21st century capable of taking up in solidarity, thus in peace, the challenges to be met in today’s world. A Europe that can remain, now more than ever, an example of integration for the entire world. This is what the representatives of European society will assert, with the words and sensibilities of this end–of–century, when they meet in The Hague from 8 to 10 May. They will say that Europe is still a combat to be fought. They will maintain that the Europe of their dreams is not the unfinished Europe in which they live. Like their predecessors, they will demand another Europe, more Europe.
THE BIRTH OF THE DREAM
For Jacques Delors, the first congress in The Hague "was one of enthusiasm, of the birth of a dream" (1). Indeed, it was in The Hague, with Winston Churchill chairing and some 800 delegates in attendance, that the utopia took wing. And all the European achievements of the past 50 years are its offspring, from the Council of Europe to the Treaty of Amsterdam, from the European Convention on Human Rights to the European Parliament elected every five years, from the common market to the single currency... But these names and concrete advances no longer inspire European citizens in day-to-day life. Wrongly so, because these achievements constitute the edifice, built stone by stone, housing the dream of the delegates to the 1948 Congress, which was to break, at last, the infernal cycle of conflicts which regularly, like an inescapable fate, plunged our continent into mourning. A dream of peace which materialized on the basis of a few fundamental principles, the essence of which is not in the least outdated:
All these elements started taking root at the 1948 Congress in The Hague. At the time, the New York Times perceptively observed: "We are witnessing today a phenomenon of the greatest importance, we are witnessing the renewal of the European spirit...".
From a distance, Jacques Delors also paid a ringing tribute to these precursors, measuring the debt our contemporaries owe them, without even realising it: “We can never sufficiently express our gratitude to all those who decided to make a radical break with types of behaviour that were suicidal to all Europeans. It was not easy, as some hungered for revenge while others demonstrated an innate mistrust of others. And above all, because of fear, the fear of others, that can still be seen surfacing today in the minds of some”... (3).
WHEN THE DREAM BECOMES CONTINENTAL
The dream of the first Congress in The Hague has thus materialized. And this dream still holds its appeal for those not yet sharing it, as attested to in President Vaclav Havel’s remarks to the European Parliament, on May 8 1994, explaining why the Czech Republic wished to join the European Union: “Yes, we are capable of voluntarily surrendering to the European Union part of our national sovereignty, to be managed jointly, aware as we are -like all Europeans- that the stakes are worth it. The part of the world where it is our lot to live still has hopes of seeing the gradual transformation of this arena of sovereigns eternally on bad terms, of powers, of nations, of social classes or religious doctrines fighting for influence or supremacy, into a forum of concrete dialogue and active cooperation by all citizens, into an area of co-existence and shared solidarity, managed and cultivated in common.”
It could not have been said better in so few words that the utopia being built since the Congress in The Hague 50 years ago is still as valid as ever. The membership applications submitted by ten Central and Eastern European countries -along with Cyprus, not to mention Malta, Switzerland and Turkey- have since attested to the fact that the dream has become a continental one. This is no surprise, according to Jacques Delors who, in his comment on the “velvet revolutions” that took place East of the Wall observed: “These non-violent revolutions which gave back to Europe the full wealth of its origins did not arise solely from the hope of attaining prosperity and well-being. They were borne by an ethical assertion, confidence in human integrity, which lies at the source of all democratic progress. And was it not the will to act in pluralism and cooperation, the desire to bring together all democracies, that was the very basis of the European Community?” (4)
The Congress in The Hague from 8 to 10 May will be the congress of the recomposed Europe. This at a time when, as Jacques Delors so rightly observes, the fear of others is resurfacing...
EUROPE’S NEED FOR A RENAISSANCE
Fear is resurfacing because all our European countries are battling against difficulties leading them insidiously to give in to the temptation of withdrawal, to forget that solidarity is the basis of the unprecedented peace Europe enjoys today. Several contemporary political leaders are succumbing to hesitation where their predecessors, to use the expression of Paul-Henri Spaak, were “not lacking in redeeming boldness”.
In spite of its positive aspects, the Amsterdam Treaty bears the marks of this hesitancy: it lacks a clear vision of the goals being sought and of the institutional tools the European Union must be given to attain them. The federal goals of the undertaking launched at the 1948 Congress still alienate certain governments of present Member States. Overwhelmed by their own problems, the others hardly fought a valiant battle in this domain. Budgetary concerns did the rest. The result: an ambiguous Treaty that is not the compass Europeans need to venture into the 21st century with an understanding of the profound meaning of their common march.
Where European leaders should have agreed on a mobilizing undertaking synonymous with hope for citizens, only a faint lantern was lit...
The Hague Congress next May will summon them to show themselves equal to the heritage for which they are responsible. It will express the expectations and demands of a European family, reunited at last, which has not lost sight of the fundamental passage of the “Message to Europeans” read by Denis de Rougemont at the first Congress of Europe: “The supreme conquest of Europe is called human dignity and its true form is freedom. These are the ultimate stakes of our struggle. It is in order to safeguard our acquired freedoms and to enlarge their benefits to all men that we seek to unite our continent.”
Man is at the heart of the European undertaking, but the citizen no longer perceives this as being so. He is afraid because Europe is in turmoil and no longer provides him with references. He is afraid because he is out of a job, because he is living through the emergence of a dual society that is synonymous for many with precarity and thus the loss of freedom. He is also afraid because he no longer recognises himself in policies which, developed on his behalf at national, regional and European level, offer no answers to his search for meaning in a profoundly changing world... Hence the fear of others which resurges and revives the temptation to withdraw into himself.
Against this backdrop, the warning issued by Vaclav Havel in his speech to the European Parliament in 1994 takes on new meaning. President Havel asserted that the extension of the thinking and the values that underpin the European Union constitutes a “vital interest” for the entire continent: “The demons are still on the look-out. The void, the disintegration of values, the fear of freedom, suffering and misery, chaos - this is their favourite ground. I believe they must not be given the slightest chance. If the future order does not emanate from the European Union, which is based on the best European values, which is prepared to defend them, to spread them, then it might be introduced by madmen, populists and demagogues of all kinds who are awaiting their turn, determined to establish the worst European traditions, which unfortunately are also many in number.”
This warning does not apply to the Central and Eastern European countries alone. The Member States of the present European Union have no reason to show the slightest tendency to arrogance. Jacques Delors said so with brilliant lucidity: “The man of the supermarket, like the man of the gulag, aspires to discover the references that give meaning to his freedom. And it is our shared task as Europeans to create the framework within which these references will once again become perceptible.” (5)
A point of view confirmed and made stronger by Father Josef Tischner, a Polish priest who directs the International Institute for Human Studies in Vienna: “To the man emerging from the gulag, we must not hold out the prospect of the economic Europe alone, marvelously rich and politically united, but also Europe as a spiritual value. (...) A Europe that represents a value in itself. This man must be convinced that, in rediscovering Europe, he is not entering another gulag that does not exist today, but that could emerge in fifteen or twenty years...” (6)
At the next Congress in The Hague, men and women from the entire continent will consequently consider how to transpose the founding values of integration, formulated 50 years ago, into the changes Europe is experiencing as this century draws to a close.
In May in The Hague, free men and women will endeavour to state that Europe’s vocation at this time is to transpose its constituent values of solidarity and freedom into today’s post-industrial society and that Europe, as unsatisfactory as it may still be, is in a better position than the other continents to rethink its initial undertaking, so generous and visionary, on the values of social justice, equality and tolerance. They will be nurtured by the conviction that it is on the basis of the European experience that we must work to invent together the human and social dimension of the society of creativity, no longer in competition, but in dialogue with our partners throughout the world. In The Hague, free men and women will forcefully assert that, as de Rougemont said so well fifty years ago in a “Message to Europeans” on the union of the continent, a message that has lost none of its timeliness: “Europe is playing out its destiny and that of peace in the world.”
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The Congress of Europe, held in The Hague from 7 to 10 May 1948, did not spring forth from a vacuum. It was a link in a chain of initiatives taken following the end of the second World War to banish the horrors of war once and for all.
The political leaders involved in these initiatives concentrated on two objectives:
The interest being shown in the development of closer cooperation in Europe was not the terrain of politicians alone, however.
Even before the war ended, different associations -often operating clandestinely- had started considering this problem. And numerous outlines of a future form of European cooperation were circulating underground. One of the best known was the work of Altiero Spinelli who had drafted during his captivity, in the company of a no less anti-fascist cell mate, the Ventotene Manifesto. The text was passed from hand to hand in the prison, but without arousing much interest: most of the prisoners were too concerned with their own survival...
After the collapse of Italian fascism, as the Allies started gaining the advantage in the war, the times were more propitious to this type of project. In 1943, Spinelli was involved in the creation of the European Federalist Movement in Milan. Accompanied by Rossi, he soon made his way to Switzerland to spread his ideas among the European resistance fighters who had sought refuge in the neutral countries. An initial meeting in Geneva on 20 May 1944 was followed by a federalist conference in Paris a year later. Albert Camus, Emmanuel Mounier, André Philip and George Orwell participated, which demonstrates that the European idea was not the private reserve of politicians.
The ideas that took shape on the shores of Lake Geneva were strongly coloured by federalism, in the image of Switzerland. Numbering among the thinkers of this future Europe were also Hendrik Brugmans and Jean Rey, inspired in large measure by the “Pan-European Movement” launched in the 1920s by Austrian Count Richard van Coudenhove-Kalergi.
A speech by Winston Churchill also constituted an essential step in the history of European thinking. A member of the opposition at the time, the former British Prime Minister issued an appeal for European unity, on 19 September 1946, in an address at the University of Zurich.
The same year, the Parliamentary Union was created on the initiative of Count van Coudenhove-Kalergi. It met subsequently in Gstaad and, in 1948, in Interlaken, where it published a document stating that “the risk of war could be averted through the creation of an indivisible federal Community”. Its authors consequently recommended the establishment of the “United States of Europe on the basis of the will of their peoples”.
Another event played a key role in post-war Europe: the appeal by American President Harry Truman and a speech by his Secretary of State George Marshall. On 12 March 1947, President Truman formulated the principles of a doctrine bearing his name: free peoples should be given the economic and financial assistance likely to ensure their development. A few weeks later, on 5 June 1947, speaking at Harvard University, Marshall urged Europeans to develop a reconstruction plan that would be backed up by American assistance.
The gap widens
A little more than a month later, on 12 July, the first European institution was created in Paris: the Committee for European Economic Cooperation (CEEC), charged with implementing the reconstruction plan with the American Government. Once the US Congress had approved the Marshall Plan (April 1948), the CEEC was transformed into the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC, the precursor of the current OCDE). West Germany belonged, although it was not yet independent, with Bonn being represented by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Occupation Forces.
The attempts to create a new order in Europe were nonetheless helpless to prevent an increasingly marked division of the Old Continent into two antagonistic blocs, the split between East and West being confirmed in 1948. That year, the Communists seized power in Czechoslovakia, while the blockade imposed by the Soviets in Berlin and the giant air lift set in place to support the city fired imaginations. These events helped the Western European countries to close ranks.
It was against this backdrop that the Congress of Europe was held from 7 to 10 May in The Hague, under the auspices of an international coordination committee that included the French Council for the United Europe, the Independent League for European Cooperation, New International Teams, United Europe Movement and European Union (which included the federalists and the European Parliamentary Union). The Honorary President of the Congress was Winston Churchill, who had pleaded for European unity two years earlier and predicted the division of Europe into two blocs by what he called the “iron curtain”.
The European microcosm
The heterogeneous -to say the least- gathering in the Dutch capital could have pointed to the emergence of a mass movement in favour of Europe. Politicians, of course, played a decisive role, but they had to come to terms with a motley assembly of trade unionists and papists, Lords and Labour, bishops and anarchists... In short, a colourful microcosm of Europe, united by the same European enthusiasm.
And yet, the first symptoms of European nationalism and chauvinism also came to the fore in The Hague. Any allusion to the Marshall Plan was avoided, for example, because some were allergic to what they considered a form of “Yankee” imperialism.
Contradictory opinions were expressed in this pluralistic gathering. The different movements forcefully defended their vision of European construction and the method they though best suited to attaining their goals. This was especially the case in the political and economic affairs committees. Most remarkable, however, is the extent to which a number of proposals formulated fifty years ago are still relevant today.
For all their differences, the real stumbling blocks to the objectives and method of European construction were swept away by a flood of solemn speeches and declarations.
Did the Congress of Europe in The Hague let pass a historic occasion to build Europe on solid foundations? Many think so.
A half-century later, The Hague will have the unique occasion to deliver a new and, this time, unequivocal, message.
THE HAGUE 1948
ILLUSTRIOUS FIGURES
The Congress of Europe in The Hague did not find its place in history solely as a result of the message it sent out to all Europeans, but also because of the standing of the figures who participated. In fact, it was a prestigious and learned assembly that gathered in 1948, counting both politicians and representatives of “civil society”.
Mention of The Hague Congress first brings to mind, unquestionably, the names of prestigious politicians such as Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan, for the UK, former French Prime Ministers Paul Ramadier and Paul Reynaud, and a fresh-from-school and still relatively obscure Minister of War Veterans, François Mitterrand. Former Ministers Paul van Zeeland and Julien Hoste represented Belgium.
But a scan of the long list of participants reveals the names of many other well known figures not belonging to the world of politics, for example, Earl Bertrand Russel, the English philosopher and author, and his famous French colleague Raymond Aron. The world of artists was represented in the person of Dutch Professor Willem Asselbergs, better known under his nom de plume, Anton van Duinkerken.
The Europeans shaped by their underground struggles were obviously not absent, with Altiero Spinelli, author of the famous Ventotene Manifesto, and his comrade in arms Professor Ernesto Rossi, for Italy. Also, the Netherlands’ Hendrik Brugmans, survivor of Dachau, who did not know at the time that he would one day become the first Rector of the College of Europe in Bruges.
Did each of these participants fully realize at the time the historical importance of this meeting? Perhaps not, but some were deeply aware of experiencing a turning point in history. In his “Mémoires interrompus”, French President François Mitterrand explains: “I was present somewhat by chance, having received an invitation by roundabout means of which I was unaware. But I was deeply conscious of the importance of this gathering, at a turning point in history, only two years after the end of the cruelest of Europe’s internal wars.”
Jean Monnet, the “Father of Europe”, also elaborated upon the Congress of Europe in his Mémoires. His testimony especially reveals the extent to which the German delegation operated behind the scenes, without being taken fully into consideration. After describing the political figures present in The Hague who, he believed, seemed destined to shape the future, Monnet added: “And there were also the unknowns: a German MP, Konrad Adenauer; a professor from Frankfurt, Walter Hallstein...”
Monnet’s opinion of the Congress was mixed, however: “In the great confusion of ideas characteristic of such gatherings, I am sure that one could have discerned some productive lines of action mixed up with a great many dreams. But I admit that I did not pay too much attention and the bogging down of the enthusiastic resolutions that were to end up a year later in the Council of Europe solution confirmed for me that this way led to an impasse.”
Monnet’s premonitory appraisal of the German contribution was reinforced by Hendrik Brugmann’s perception of the event: “There was an important German delegation led by Dr Adenauer. Its members participated very discreetly in public debates, but its very presence was the symbol of a new era.”
EVENTS IN 1948
1948 : WHY THE HAGUE ?
That left The Hague.
The 1948 Congress was to inscribe The Hague in gilt letters in the annals of the European Movement.
Fifty years later, the European Movement will once again return to the city that witnessed its birth. As the saying goes, doesn’t one always return to one’s first love?
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