His Excellency Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Former President, Republic of France

"How to Understand Today's Europe "

Ladies and Gentlemen, honorable guests, dear friends:

I would like, first, to thank Mr. Kent Kresa, former Chairman of the Board of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, Mr. Curtis Mack, President, and Ms. Mary Morris, Vice President of the same institution, for their invitation and this opportunity they gave me to address such an impressive audience, impressive by its number and impressive by its quality, on the question, "How to Understand Today’s Europe." Thank you, President Kresa, for your presentation and short biography with which you introduced me.

I went once to a ranch in Texas. I was traveling with my wife in a rented car a few years ago and we were invited for dinner by ranchers and they didn’t know us, but the lady told me, "Oh, you are a very famous person." "Maybe," [I said.] "Yes, because I checked your name on the Internet and I got thirty pages of answers."

I apologize, Mr. Kresa, for the problem you had with pronouncing my name. It reminds me of a problem with our youngest daughter. In our family we used to give family Christian names to children, and sometimes they are complicated. And so our youngest daughter is called "Jacinte," and she had a young boy a few years ago and we asked her, "How will you name him?" We secretly hoped they would give one of our family’s names. She said, "I will name him Martin." I thought, "What, there’s no one named Martin in the family." She said, "Yes, I know, but you gave me a name which is impossible to pronounce and I want my little boy to travel in the world with a name which will be easier to pronounce."

Well, the question is, "How to understand today’s Europe?" If, in the short time I have, I succeed in giving you the answer it will be quite an accomplishment, because even for us Europeans, it is sometimes difficult to understand today’s Europe. I would like to thank also Guy Yelda, Consul General of France in Los Angeles, who has been instrumental in making this event possible. I’ve been given twenty-five minutes to answer this question. This reminds me of an experience I had one day with a younger statesman who had been given a time limit for a speech and who adjusted his wrist-watch alarm in order not to pass his limit. He became so bored with his own lecture that when the alarm rang he mistook it for the ticking of a time bomb and ran off the stage. I will stay.

At the beginning of this century, Europe faces three major problems. One is a definition of its goal. What does Europe really want to achieve? The second is the need to reform its outdated institutions that were created now fifty years ago for six countries and who are not adapted any more for the new period and the new members. And then the question of its territorial limits: where are the borders of Europe? I will try to address these three issues. But before doing so, I will just recall the fact that the second half of the 20th century has been a period of remarkable achievement for Europe.

When we look at this century, which is just behind us now, the first part of the century was marked by two world wars initiated in Europe, with the horror and genocide of the Second World War. And the second half of the century has seen the reconciliation between Germany and France, which was unbelievable. The first time a man like me had seen German soil was through the scope of my gun an American tank. I became a very good friend of the German Chancellor thirty years later. This [kind of friendship] is now a fact of life accepted by everyone in Germany and in France. It is also the longest period of peace in the history of Western Europe. We never had fifty years without a conflict of some sort. The building of a single economic market, and a signal for the opening of a new period, is the introduction of the Euro on January 1, 1999. So if you look at this fifty-year period, it is indeed a period of remarkable achievement.

I hope there will be a question later about the Euro, because I have a prepared response. I’m like DeGaulle, who, whenI was a minister, I admired very much. He had a habit of giving press conferences and all the answers were learned by heart by himself in advance. He would look at the audience to see the journalist who would ask the question. At the end when he wanted to say something, if, for instance, if he wanted to say, "You know that France will recognize the Republic of China," what he would say is, "Well, I see someone who’d like to ask me this question"--which I think is a good technique.

So I think Europeans could be proud of the changes they brought to Europe in the last fifty years. But now, what is the goal of the European Union, what do we want to achieve? I think it’s important for you, the citizens of the United States, to understand--I wouldn’t say to approve, because it’s a process on the way, but to understand what we are trying to achieve, a very normal and understandable historic process. At the beginning, in the early ‘50s, at the time of the Treaty of Rome, of the community of steel and coal, the concept was clear and understood by the public. It was to create a new political structure based on a far-reaching integration and led by institutions of a federal type. When you read statements of that period to summarize it, as Jean Monet did, it was to organize the United States of Europe. Jean Monet lived not far from our home in Paris, and there is now a memorial plaque on his home and a statement by him that he wanted to support the United States of Europe. This was the initial idea. It is really what we did and what you very kindly summarized, Mr. Chairman, between 1958 and 1980. Step by step, and due to the actions of the successive leaders, we created the European Commission, which is now known in the world and which is a sort of executive power with a role of furthering integration and which had a prominent chairman in the past and now. In 1975, we set up at the Élysee Palace the European Council, which is now the permanent structure of the head of government and presidents of the European Union, and which is, in fact, the embryo of a European government.

I remember well the last visit that Jean Monet paid to me. I respected him, he was an aging person, very modest, very discreet, and I received him every six months at the Elysées to have his advice. The last time he came before his death I accompanied him to the door, I closed it, and then I heard a knock. It was Jean Monet. He wanted to come in again. I said, "Well, what do you want?" He said, "I forgot to tell you something. What you did in creating the European Council is the most important step since the signature of the Rome Treaty." And then he went away and I never saw him again.

In 1979 we had a European Parliament elected by direct vote--the first time in history--and since then, every five years, we have reelection of this European Parliament. At the same time, we have erased the barriers between our economies to create a single market. We had a network of quotas, tariffs, and controls, which seems unbelievable now. It was impossible for a Frenchman to buy a German good, or an Italian good, without having a special permit to do it--a special permit to buy, a special permit to pay. When you go on the Champs Elysées, you see small buildings there, and they were the gates of Paris that existed until the 19th century, and where people paid [a fee] when they brought their imports of foods of some sort. All this has disappeared and now we really have a single market. The problem is to have free competition in these markets. It’s easy for the consumer goods, it’s more complicated for public endeavors, but it’s certainly working better and better every day.

But something was still missing--a sort of basic law, a sort of constitution to define the content and to draw the limits of the political union. If you look at the process, this should have been done in the early ‘80s after the Parliament was set up. When we decided to have a single currency, we needed to add the base for the political union. But these documents were never drawn up because of the opposition of certain countries, for motives of their own, mostly Britain and Denmark, which were hostile to the concept of a federal Europe.

The six founding countries [agreed] on that they wanted new members, the Irish, and after that the Spanish and the Portuguese were more or less in favor. But the northern part of Europe and Britain was opposing the concept. So we tried twice, with the treaties of Mastricht and Amsterdam--well, they’re complicated treaties, as you know. If it’s difficult for you to get some sleep sometime, instead of taking pills which could be damaging to you, you should have near your bed the Mastricht and Amsterdam treaties, and after two or three pages, you’re absolutely assured of having whatever sleep you need. These treaties were some half-hearted documents because in there you have positive advances. For instance, we have the monetary union, which is not negligible in the Mastricht Treaty and the Amsterdam Treaty. You have the opening of the defense structure of Europe. They consist of certain improvements of the European Union, but they avoided the main question concerning the nature of the political union. Is it a federation? [Is it] a sort of economic alliance? [Is it] a sort of permanent cooperation between union states? There is no definition of that, and when the Mastricht Treaty was approved in 1991--Mastricht, as you know is a small town in the south of Netherlands and the Dutch who were preparing the treaties brought in a document which was the Mastricht Treaty--on the first page it was indicated that the goal of the European Union was to create a federal union of states. It was in the treaty and there was a discussion and it was eliminated from the text. So this issue is not settled, and [there] exists disagreement between the federalists or sort of federalists, the people for governmental cooperation, and now what we call the sovereignties who want to take back some of the [powers] to the nationalist state. So there are three positions now in Europe.

This issue became more complicated since 1990 with the perspective of a new enlargement. We have already practiced enlargement. We were six countries, and when the first letter was sent by the French Foreign Secretary, who was then Robert Schumann, it was not sent to five other countries but to twelve other countries. Only six accepted, and we started being six. Slowly we increased the number and today, as our Consul here knows, we are fifteen. But this enlargement was a slow and gradual process. It spanned over thirty years. These countries joined us by small groups composed of two or three countries, so it did not change the nature of the process. But now, we are facing the prospect of the admission of thirteen new members. The population of the European Union when this is finished will reach 500 million people with different political and social cultures, twenty-three different languages and a large spectrum of economic development. But even that index should take the level of standard of living, cost of labor, productivity--these indexes vary from one to ten, from the bottom to the top. Then it is clear that the initial concept of deep integration between countries of similar features and similar cultures is no longer adapted and needs to be adjusted. Also, Jacques D’Alors was a former president of the Commission and a very able president, I must say. As he stated recently in a French paper, there is a contradiction between integration and enlargement. We cannot make both. And we haven’t chosen yet between these two concepts nor found the proper accommodation. This will be the essential question we have to face. Up until now, we haven’t found the answer.

The second point is based on an absolute necessity: the need to reform the existing institutions. Well, it’s not a very fascinating subject for you, but you are an international audience, quite expert in these matters, and it’s very easy to understand. These institutions were conceived for six countries very closely linked--France, Germany, the three Scandinavian countries and Italy--and they’re no longer adapted to fifteen countries. They will be paralyzed with twenty-seven members. For instance, when we were six we knew each other by name. When we had a debate, we were seated on a table smaller than the table you are seated at now and we had discussions. With twenty-seven members and rotating governments all over Europe, we don’t know the others. When there is the classic "round the table" to begin a discussion it takes eight to nine hours just to listen to the opening statements. Well, of course, there are other activities. It’s amusing because sometimes during these discussions we use translations, and when people criticize the Commission, for instance, for the number of its agents, the highest number by far are the interpreters. Every time we add a language by mathematical rule we multiply by 50 the number of translators. You know the way it works. So it’s very comfortable because you watch people in the meetings and some of them who have absolutely no knowledge of fine language, in the middle, they remove the hearing system, and so you feel you are free to speak because there will be no objections nor leaks.

These are practical questions that have to be settled before the end of this year 2000, because we have made it a condition for further enlargement. We agreed that we cannot enlarge without reforming, so we must reform now and enlarge when the countries will be ready to come, probably for some of them in two or three years time. We need to finish at the end of the year 2000.

If you take the three practical issues for the size of the Commission, now the Commission is a sort of ruling body of the system, and the great countries have two members and all the other countries have one member. If we keep it whole the Commission will be composed of more than thirty commissioners. It cannot function. If we take an institution here and a company here, which will be directed by a group with equal power of twenty-two or twenty-three persons, it cannot function. So, we have to reduce this number. But to reduce it, the small countries will refuse to be deprived of their commissioner because they think it’s a matter of national pride and national interest. We must have at the same time imagination and political will to make them accept the fact that we need a commission between twelve and fifteen members and certainly not above thirty.

Then the voting rights. We have a system of voting in the Council. Some decisions must be taken by unanimity and some others are voted upon. We have a set of voting rights, which were decided at the beginning and at that moment it wasn’t very important to have a very carefully studied evaluation of votes. So the Germans have ten votes and they are 82 million people, and Luxembourg has two votes, and they have just below 400,000 people. If you just look at this example, not to quote France, for instance, a man, a citizen of Luxembourg, has 41 times more power of voting than a German citizen. When decisions are not important it doesn’t matter, but when we will have to take major decisions, the decisions must reflect the real majority of people, and so the reform we are heading to is to say that the vote should represent not a number of votes given by the treaty, but the majority of the people, a calculation of the people of the population of each country should make a majority. And, also, this change will meet a strong resistance because not a single country will easily accept a reduction of its voting rights and some countries joined Europe by a very small vote, which was the case of Sweden. You have the problem of Denmark, the problem of Norway, which just came in and left finally, and when a country does this, it’s very difficult for the leaders to accept the reduction of their rights, because the people who are critical for joining will say after joining, if you reduce the rights we have in the system, we will not accept it.

The third point, which is probably the most sensitive, is a list of questions. We accept [decision] by a majority of votes instead of a unanimous consent, because a unanimous consent, protects the national role and rights. If we move to a majority rule, decisions will be taken by the will of certain people against the will of others--will they accept that? For instance, the rate of taxation of people’s income or on profits of companies should be decided by a majority vote in Europe or must be left in national hands. Can we create a European tax which is proposed by certain parties, generally on the left of the spectrum, to create an additional tax, a European tax? This tax will be created by majority vote against the will of a minority of countries. Difficult to accept. At the open level, the same question may apply to social protection, to retirement age of workers, or to family or farming policies, and we address these issues by majority vote or keep the existing rule of unanimous consent with a veto right for each country. You see, it looks technical but it’s practical, in fact, because when you are twenty-seven with each of them with a veto right every decision can be blocked. When we were few and when one country was opposing we could try to convert this country to adjust to certain pressure, but with twenty-seven countries, one man will say, "Well, I do not accept this; I put my veto," we have to move to a majority vote. But if we move to a majority vote, will our citizens accept to see important issues of their daily lives decided, not by their own parliament, but by the European Parliament and Council? We are bound to reach an agreement on all these reforms before the end of this year 2000, and it will be under the rotating French presidency. So you may easily imagine it will not be an easy task.

Now I mentioned a curious question, which is a new question for Europe. It’s a question of the borders of Europe. Where are the limits of Europe? Who is a citizen of Europe and who is not? It’s a question under dispute now. The most important and significant case, as you certainly read in the press, is the case of Turkey. Does Turkey belong to the European Union or not, and what should be our position on this, and what will be our position for the Ukraine, for Russia, for Belarus? It’s very strange to think that we never debated this issue, and the reason was we had a border, which was the Iron Curtain, and then all the west of the Iron Curtain belonged to the first European process. But now we have no border to the east, and where must we affix it? Are these borders given by history? Romano Prodi, who’s a very brilliant chairman of the European Commission--I like him very much and I like his country very much also--has the imagination of Italy, and so the other day he said, "Well, we will rebuild the Roman Empire." So, I came back home and looked into an Atlas to see the borders of the Roman Empire. You know, in the Roman Empire you never had Ireland and you never had Scotland, because they had the wall. They were beyond the wall. You just had two-thirds of Germany, but never had Poland, nor the Baltic countries. The Roman Empire was a Mediterranean empire, in fact, so it [isn’t] a definition of Europe. The Napoleonic Empire, of course, could be a proposal of France--happily, until now, I didn’t hear anything about it.... While the Napoleonic Empire is also not a good definition, it was a continental empire without the Balkans. The Balkans were absolutely left off it and the Baltic states and even Poland weren’t part of it. So, it’s not a good definition either. So when you look at history it doesn’t give you the answer. Is it a geographical entity, as it is written on maps within Europe? You can understand this here in America because you have the chance not to use the same name. Sometimes you say "The United States," and sometimes you say "America," but the United States does not cover the totality of the northern part of America. You have good neighbors like Canada and Mexico, so you don’t have this confusion.

But for us--the geographical entity--where are the limits? Well, on one side there is the Atlantic Ocean, of course, but on the other side, will it go, as De Gaulle stated, from the Atlantic to the Urals. It could be a logical choice, because when you look at a map, when you ignore the borders, it is a sort of part of the Euro-Asian peninsula, which is cut by the Urals. But it’s impossible to accept this because Russia is composed of European Russians, and Siberian Russia will not accept being divided in two; so, it’s not a good limit either.

Is it a cultural entity? To some extent yes, because there is a strong cultural basis. When Europeans meet together, and when you are so much informed and concerned with European culture, there is a base there, but it cannot be a very precise base because we have different religions in Europe and we have strong minorities. So we must think of what the essence of the European Union is. For me, it is a group of countries who have the common will and who have similar means to organize the European continent. So, it means that it’s not a question of discriminating. It’s a question of listening to what every country has to say--if it has the will to participate, if it has the adequate means to do it.

Well, I think this will be my conclusion. At the end of 25 minutes, you certainly know the quote of a famous British statesman, politician more than statesman, who said to an audience once--he was always speaking too long--he said, "You know, when I address an audience I never object when I see people looking at their watches, but I’m offended when they shake their wrists to verify that they haven’t stopped."

So I go to my conclusion: what will you see from your side of the Atlantic? You will see a future in Europe composed of many areas of possible progress, for instance, the Euro zone will progressively get more of a harmonious structure. The defense policies will be more integrated without being split from the NATO structure. Companies will have certainly more relationships and we will go on with important mergers and acquisitions, as is the case now. So we’ll see a sort of progress, through patches of progress, and issues one by one will be resolved. But the basic questions I mentioned will remain until some expression of the common political will emerges. And vis-a-vis the United States, the United States are at the same time worried and understanding. They understand that it is a necessity....

The reason I accepted, Mr. Chairman, your invitation, is to have a good understanding between the United States and the European Union, which is on its way and can be reached only by mutual meetings and debates. We are living in a changing world and we must accept the evolution of others. So, I guess that America must accept the evolution of Europe, something which is linked to the changing of times. We must not perceive the changes as a threat, but as a contribution to the common evolution, an evolution that will remain based on a mutual understanding and, for me, and I hope for you, a lasting friendship.

Thank you.