Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
at the beginning of this year, in an interview the French newspaper Le Monde asked the former President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors: - In Helsinki, the president of the European Commission in Brussels, Romano Prodi, proposed to launch a large debate about Europe's frontiers... At which point Jacques Delors interrupted the interviewer and replied: That's the 1 million euro question! It is insoluble.

Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,
my following paper is to be an attempt to contribute to solving that question – seemingly insoluble.

Since the awakening of democratic forces in the former Soviet bloc countries about a decade ago unbelievable things have become feasible in Europe: For example, not long ago, in the Brussels-based European Parliament building young Czech trainee David introduced me to one of his friends, young Ukrainian Oleg, who was jobbing as a tourists' guide at Nato headquarters; we chatted together in English about European Union enlargement.

This is but an episode, yet meaningful, for as late as the eighties Western Europe for an ordinary Easterner (East Germans like me included) was terra incognita and Nato according to official propaganda, was the incarnation of the evil. What is more, Prague was the capital of an undivided socialist Czechoslovakia, and Ukraine was a firm component of the Soviet Union.

The upheaval in the East has had a thorough effect not only on that part of Europe but on Europe as a whole. One of these effects seems to be that at least one thing has become impossible: the creation of a federal-structured State for the whole of Europe.

That is, in a Europe now undivided, the vision cherished in the fifties by Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman of a united Europe can, today, no longer be materialized.

A free, undivided Europe, with the poorly off, however free politically, more and more constituting a majority, must rethink a lot of things: It must, above all, take account of the fact that the European Union must substantially change its character if it wants to go on being a model for the whole of Europe. In plain English: In its present shape, it has, rather, become a phase-out model.

It is true, already before 1989/90, due to several enlargements of the original six-member European Community, the concept of a European federal State had become more and more questionable. It was mainly the advent of the United Kingdom in 1973 and the inclusion of the Greeks in 1981 that started to gradually watering down the federal idea of the founding fathers.

While the UK as the leader of a Commonwealth of her own (and, what is more, the bearer of the world language proper) has had, quite understandably, difficulties in becoming a member state among others (and a linguistic entity among others), the admission of Greece to the EC introduced the Orthodox world to an otherwise Roman-Empire type community, thus changing its original character in a fundamental way.

Yet, it is only after the revolutionary events in Central and Eastern Europe a decade ago that a Europe-wide federal concept is about to fully lose its backing in reality: Complete eastward enlargement of the Community, with it to deepen simultaneously (which, strictly speaking, does not mean anything else than economic and social redistribution or levelling among its member states) is, both logically and practically, not feasible because of the following major facts.

(1) Europe has, at least in the East, no definable borders. It does have permanent borderlines within, though:

The issue of Europe's eastern borders – for decades regarded by many as superfluous or even undesirable – could be, and actually was, put to the agenda after the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the vanishing of the Iron Curtain.

Any attempt to answer that question should take into consideration that Europe does not end east of Bulgaria (a country which according to the present-day EU philosophy is its easternmost accession candidate). There is, after all, Ukraine – one of the largest European countries, which so far has not been an accession candidate.

What is more, even with regard to the lands east of Ukraine, one cannot deny that there is some very strong European element as well. The crux is: Where Russia ends to be European and starts to be Asiatic is a question no one can answer – not even the Russians themselves. At any rate, that question cannot be solved by means of geography.

Hence, any reasonable all-European policy concept would have to take account of the above facts, that is, any attempt to have the East take part, in a non-discriminatory manner, in European affairs should not bring about new dividing lines in the East; otherwise this might have unforeseen consequences, military ones not excluded.

Yet, any community of the present-day European Union type needs, per definitionem, definable geographic borders. With Europe having no such clear-cut borders in the East, there cannot be such a thing as complete enlargement to the East.

That is, the present EU enlargement philosophy as such should be doubted, for it is highly questionable whether that concept will actually contribute to the strengthening and safeguarding of peace, freedom, security, and well-being in Europe.

As far as the above-mentioned permanent borderlines are concerned, these are no turnpikes, but the multitude of languages that virtually prevent Europe from having a general public (which would be a conditio sine qua non for the setting-up of a federal State-like community).

Since present-day Europe will accept neither one ethnic language, such as English, nor any artifical common language as lingua franca, Europe's nations will have to cope with their linguistic situation: Unlike America, with English prevailing, or China, with Mandarin dominating, Europe is not suited for a United-States-type community.

(2) Even if we leave the above questions of (missing) borders and (permament) borderlines out of consideration, a hypothetical federal-type European State would not have sufficient means to provide for Europe-wide overall economic and social cohesion, stipulated at Maastricht.

In the eighties, Greece, Spain, and Portugal became members of the EC, with the latter three Southern European countries getting large-scale financial support, meant to allow them to come closer economically and socially to EC average.

It goes without saying that hardly anyone politically responsible at that time realized that the handling of the Southern Europeans' situation did set a precedent relative to a post-Iron-Curtain time: To be compelled some day to support Poles, Czechs, and Bulgarians in the same way as was done with regard to Spaniards, Portuguese, and Greeks – this was, in fact, something beyond the realm of imagination!

Who dared to doubt that the Iron Curtain was something definite, and that the Soviet Union, recognized as the second world power, would exist forever? This does not exclude the assumption that a lot of people – not only in the East – wholeheartedly regretted that situation.

Consequently, when in 1989/90 the revolutionary changes started in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia included, the unimaginable was, in fact, welcomed by a majority of democrats in the West: At last, the brothers and sisters in the East began to free themselves from dictatorship. Naturally, they had to be helped. Naturally the politically responsible in the West promised the emerging young democracies in Central and Eastern Europe to lead them back to Europe. Hence, association agreements with several of those countries were concluded with the aim to greet them some day as new members of the European Community.

At the same time, in 1993, Maastricht coined the notion of economic and social cohesion within the Community (in those days renamed as Union): According to interpretations of all those not ranking among the better-off, such as Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Greece, a 'cohesion' of that type has been synonymous with establishing equal standards of living for all EU citizens (at top level, of course).

No wonder that now also the accession candidates from Poland to Rumania and from Hungary to Bulgaria expect similar support, dreaming of rich financial aid from the West. And in the more prosperous EU countries the question is being asked: Who can and will pay for all that. There is no answer to that question.

Yet, one thing seems to be certain: The redistribution-type EU model of enlarging plus deepening meets with objective limits (or bounds), because the material and institutional facilities that had allowed economic and social progress in a smaller EC/EU for more than four decades, are no longer able to extend the model to the rest of Europe.

That is to say, the vision of the founding fathers of free post-war Europe can be kept only in a dialectical manner. What solely matters is the core of the vision as formulated in the fifties: the creation and safeguarding of peace and freedom, that is, the creation of a society of shared values rather than a society of equal distribution of commodities.

In this context it does not matter whether a specific country already belongs to the European Union. For the better-off nations to spend money for securing Soviet-type Ukrainian nuclear power plants – not least in their own interest – it makes no difference whether Ukraine is already in the EU or not. In addition, the fight against organized crime must predominantly be coordinated with countries still outside the EU; the reasons for it are self-explanatory. To give one more example: A common foreign and security policy is nonsense if it does not include Russia as a major European player.

In the light of all this the European Union must change. It should reject what it has so far cherished as number-one priority: the striving for economic and social cohesion. Now the critical mass is likely to have been reached from which point Europe must leave behind the socialist principle of redistribution from the allegedly rich to the allegedly poor.

For really poor countries cannot be found in the present EU; the really poor started coming into free Europa only a decade ago. They had been suffering from decade-long command economies and the consequent suppression of private initiative to such an extent that they will need many years to be able to attain the level of the present-day weakest EU member states.

In concrete terms: From the year 2006 (that is, when the current EU structural fund period terminates) the EU should abandon the principle of redistribution and should, instead, re-assign the responsibility to the European nation states for them to improve lower developmental levels of regions within their respective countries. This would also be a positive signal in the direction of the emerging young democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, Ukraine and Russia included:

Our Continent will become healthy only if it is the nation states that set the framework for material well-being and social security (things that are unquestioned in any other part of the world, by the way). The big living-standard differences can be bridged only if through opening of markets those now underdeveloped get a fair chance to reach, out of their own will and strength, the level of the others, more favoured by Europe's post-war history.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
let us now consider the question: Why has, in the past few decades, the issue of Europe's borders and bounds not been considered a crucial problem? Why has there been no extensive debate about Europe's borders and bounds?

In my view, the reasons are as follows: The history of the European Community (and later, the European Union) has taken place within a continent which since the end of World War II was divided by an Iron Curtain. For many years, the Iron Curtain was much more powerful and dominating than any geographic border within Europe. This Iron Curtain was finally accepted by most Europeans as a given fact: In any case, it clearly delimited the European Community in the East. And since the lands east of the Iron Curtain were virtually an appendix to the Soviet Union, there was no real need to define Europe's border in the East.

That the vision of a united Europe could emerge in the West was bound to the existence of that artificial border in the East, however paradoxical this may sound in the ears of people outside the West.

We can assume that most people in the early European Community – that is, the Community of Six, made up of France, West Germany, Benelux, and Italy – were not fully aware of the fact that this attempt to unite Europe would cover only part of Europe. That the Europe of Six was not considered a torso is probably due to the fact that this community of states was built on a territory that centuries ago had been ruled by Charlemagne, who had achieved not only a high degree of economic but also of cultural homogeneity among the various peoples and tribes. In a way, the early European Community was an 'Updated Version' of the Roman Empire. Thus, hardly anyone in this self-contained entity of nations felt the need to ask about Europe's external (that is, geographic) borders.

What is more, the early EC was composed of nations that had altogether only four languages: German, French, Dutch, and Italian. Thus, the situation was similar to the one found in Switzerland (which has also a total of four languages). From this follows that the internal borderlines, so deeply felt in the present-day European Union with its eleven national languages, could still be neglected in the early European Community of the fifties. So, not only was the issue of external borders irrelevant, but also the issue of internal borderlines was no matter of concern.

Last but not least, in the European Community (and in the European Union as well), which has consisted for the most part of well-off countries, material shortcomings – let alone large-scale poverty – have so far been an unknown quantity: That is to say, not only was the issue of geographic and linguistic borders irrelevant, but there has also been a lack of awareness of bounds in the sphere of material resources.

Taking all these aspects together, we can better understand why people in Western Europe – politicians and ordinary citizens alike – have been proceeding from false assumptions when, after the political turmoil in Central and Eastern Europe a decade ago, they invited, blue-eyed, their Eastern sisters and brothers to 'return to Europe': They have been blue-eyed because they have not had any clear notion of Europe's borders and bounds in the various interpretations of these words.

After the Fall of the Iron Curtain and the Revolutions in the East the time is ripe to define Europe anew. As suggests the Latin word for 'define', the task consists of specifying the frontiers (or borders) as well as the limits (or bounds).

Let us recall the fact that Europe is lacking unequivocally definable borders – at least in the East; so we will not be capable of setting up a clearly defined federal State-type community that might include all Europeans. Hence, we need a new political approach. We must leave the concept of a Europe based on the principle of exclusivity (or exclusiveness). In other words: We must leave the all-or-nothing principle. We need, rather, an approach that specifies fulfillable criteria according to which any country can – out of its own – determine to which degree it regards itself 'European'. These fulfillable criteria must permit any country to participate in this community to the extent it thinks appropriate and reasonable. That is: We must exchange exclusiveness for inclusiveness.

By following this approach, the question of whether or not Russia (or even Turkey) are European becomes irrelevant: Russia, for example, is European to the extent she considers herself to be European.

This said, Europe should also leave the notion of being united some day. Europe should, rather, consider itself as a continent which, after the Fall of the Iron Curtain, has become undivided.

Eventually, the citizens of our undivided continent should accept their respective diversity: In particular, the Western and Orthodox civilizations should accept their respective otherness to be able to go together. For Europe is, in fact, made up of a Western and an Eastern element. The main player in the East is Russia, a country which will no doubt become necessary for Europe to reach the critical size that allows it to become a global player in the proper sense of the word.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
let me conclude by saying this: I have experienced the death of a system, the forebodings of which many people did not want to take account of. I have seen the collapse of frontiers between the two Germanies and the limits of a man-made system. Even today I am sceptical vis à vis phrases such as the 'irreversibility' of the situation in Europe, resembling the hollow word of the 'unstoppable victory of socialism' in the former Soviet bloc: Who has experienced the peaceful revolution not via TV screen but in reality, with a mixture of hope and angst, knows that on our Earth – thank God! – there is no such thing as 'irreversibility'.

The main objective of the founding fathers of the European Community in a divided continent was not the creation of a federal state. It was, rather, the safeguarding of Peace and Freedom. Today the founding fathers' legacy should be translated to contemporary requirements.

To preserve the founding fathers' ideas on a higher level we must openly and frankly discuss the issue of Europe's borders and bounds.

This discussion should avoid any prejudice: Who attempts to name Europe's crisis and points to feasible ways out of it is not a Eurosceptic or Europessimist. Quite on the contrary.