This year is the 50^th anniversary of the establishment of the European Community. This event represents an opportunity for reflection on the historical meaning of the European unification.
At the beginning, the EC was a union of six countries. Now it stretches from Lapland to the Mediterranean and from Poland to the Canaries and includes 27 countries. It is a Community of 487 million inhabitants where 23 official languages are spoken, and includes approximately 100 ancient ethnic minorities. It has an executive commission, a parliament, an upper house, a court of justice, a central bank, a currency, a citizenship, a flag, an anthem, a passport. National borders have been abolished.
The unification process has developed with the ups and downs characteristic of a difficult undertaking such as the overcoming of the sovereignty of an increasing number of states which joined the original core of the founding states.
It is worth recollecting two dates which represent milestones in the history of European unification. The first is 10 June 1979, when the European Parliament was first elected by universal suffrage. This represented a qualitative leap in the construction of European unity with the European Parliament becoming the first supranational parliament in history. It is an innovation that could change the world history. Democracy, which usually stops at state borders, has become international. In future it could become global with the transformation of the UN General Assembly into a World Parliament.
The second date is the 1^st of January 1999 when the European Central bank was established, thus opening the way to the circulation of the euro in 2002. It was a historic step on the road toward the construction of a European sovereignty. The euro has been a great success. The share of euros in the global official reserves amounts to 25%. Since December 2006, the quantity of euro notes in circulation in the world has overtaken the dollar. This is an extraordinary performance considering that it is only five years since the euro was launched. At the same time, the euro is the starting point of a transition toward a polycentric international monetary system and, as an integrated global market cannot work with many competing currencies, towards a world currency.
What is the historical significance of the grand design of European unification? The most important achievement of the EU is undoubtedly peace. After centuries of warfare, Europe has never before lived so long in peace as it now has in the post-2nd world war period, which coincides with the beginning of the process of European unification.
What is peace? It is not simply the absence of war. This is the negative notion of peace which Kant called "truce" and placed in the same category as war. Instead, positive peace, requires a political organization which prevents war through entrusting the power to settle conflicts among states to a federal authority acting on the basis of law. According to Kant's philosophy, the foundation-stone of peace is law and - more precisely - the extension of law to the sphere of international relations.
"War appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modern invention", said Henry Maine. War has always been considered a normal event in political life, the vehicle for settling conflicts unsolvable through diplomacy. The novelty of the EU lies in the fact that it represents the most successful attempt so far to build a new form of statehood at international level, even though its pace has been slow and hesitant.
The EU is the most intensively regulated region of the world. Its political institutions impose restraints on what sovereign states may do in their relations with each other, and in this it shows the way to what the UN could become in the future: namely, the guardian of international law and the framework of a process of constitutionalization of international relations. The European integration process weakens national governments and compels them to co-operate in order to solve together the problems they are unable to cope with separately. It creates a European civil society side by side with national civil societies, and establishes European institutions that represent a decision-making mechanism which progressively depletes national institutions. The process has advanced to such a stage that war among European Union member states has become inconceivable. The current political debate on the Constitution shows how far the process of unification in Europe has advanced. In other words, slowly and imperfectly something like a European Federation is taking shape.
It is wholly unrealistic to plan fusion among nation-states; that is, among forms of political organization based on power centralization and international antagonism. The EU represents a rejection of such nationalism which knows no other way to pursue unification but imperialism. The EU is not and will never be a state in the traditional meaning of the word. It will rather be a Federation of states. The nascent European Federation is facing the task of promoting mutual toleration and solidarity among nations. The vitality of the European unification experience springs from the attempt to reconcile unity on the one hand with the Old Continent's diversity of peoples on the other. It relies on the principle that the result of any attempt to suppress differences will be worse than accepting them. The experience of the European Community brings ample evidence that the epoch of World Wars has passed. The enlarged EU, which now includes most Central and Eastern European Countries, represents the overcoming of the Cold War.
In spite of this success, the mood of the Europeans towards celebrating the birth of the European Community is one of indifference. As Pope Benedict XVI, drawing up a balance of 2006, has stated: "Europe seems to be tired, or rather seems to be inclined to take leave of history." By blocking the European Constitution, the French and Dutch electorates have suddenly made the future uncertain.
It is a fact that the European unification project is as yet unaccomplished. The EU still has only a limited capacity for action. The budget is only 1% of the European GDP. The proposed rapid reaction force agreed in 1999 has not yet been established. Moreover, widening the Union without first strengthening it threatens the cohesion of its political institutions and carries with it the hidden danger of the EU regressing to the status of a free trade area.
During the past half century the construction of the EU was based essentially on economic integration under the protection of the US. In future the EU will exist only if it is able to become a global actor. The growing role of the euro and the mission to Lebanon can be judged as positive steps in the right direction.
Another weakness of the EU lies in the right of veto, which continues to be the rule in such crucial areas as foreign, security and fiscal policies, and constitutional revision. It is a dream to imagine that the 27 member states can all proceed at the same speed. Unanimous ratification of the Constitution was an illusory expectation. True, 18 countries have now ratified the full document, but the rejection of the Constitution in France and the Netherlands has meant that - following the current rules which are at variance with the democratic principle - the will of a small minority can in the end prevail over that of the majority.
The only way out of this deadlock is to entrust EU citizens with the power to express their decision through a European constitutional referendum. This method will oblige governments to recognize the sovereignty of the European people and comply with the majority rule. An EU-wide referendum will mark the birth of the European people who will appear on the stage of political life as the holders of the constituent power.
In conclusion, it seems that Europe's destiny can be to define global models. If the EU becomes able to speak with one voice, it will unify its representation in the IMF, the World Bank and the Security Council and will therefore become the vehicle for UN reform.

Paul Kennedy
The Parliament of Man: The Past, Present and Future of the United Nations
Toronto, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 2006

Such a book as this, especially such a book as might be read by World Federalists, could hardly begin in any other way than by quoting Alfred Lord Tennyson's famous "Locksley Hall" and so indeed does Paul Kennedy begin. "Till the ward-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd / In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. / There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, / And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law".
While, of course, Paul Kennedy has not actually written this book which gives a thorough and timely history of the United Nations, explaining its roots and functions while also critically analysing both its effectiveness past and present and its prospects for effectiveness in the future, specifically for World Federalists, it is a book that resonates indeed with our incremental federalist vision. As we strive forward to our particular vision of a 'Federation of the world', it is heartening to discover in a book like this, written by a former fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton University and of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung in Bonn, not one, not two (as the index says) but actually three references to World Federalists. And they are references that simply take the existence of World Federalists for granted as an NGO working in a positive and helpful way towards good global governance and international relations.
This very readable book begins though not only with a note on the title, a commentary therefore on Tennyson and his poem, but also with some commentary on the influence that Tennyson's vision and his poem have had on those such as former US President Harry Truman, (P. Kennedy is after all an American) including such 'colour commentary' as the fact that Truman kept a copy of the poem in his wallet to be read out as a justification of his commitment to international organizations whenever the occasion should call for it.
This kind of 'colour commentary', used effectively and not over-used, is part of what makes this book so very readable and both realistic and positive. Kennedy clearly knows his subject matter inside out in both its strengths and its weaknesses but he is neither an unthinking apologist for the UN nor a dour critic. He assesses both the UN's strengths and weaknesses, sees its necessity for the world and cautions the world community to neither be too optimistic or too pessimistic about what it has done and is doing and can do. And he does all this, through a thorough analysis of some of the major thematic and governance streams of the UN, focusing not on the plethora of minutiae but on the major themes and streams. And he does it with a realistic touch and a sense of humour. He includes what my son would call such 'fun facts' as the irony that Germany and Japan are still referred to in the UN Charter, Article 53, as 'enemy states' and yet are now the second and third largest contributors to the UN budget. He also, when referring to the permanent five members of the Security Council, refers to them on one occasion as 'the grumpy P5'.
The book is helpfully divided into a number of sections with Part One, in Kennedy's words, telling "...a tale of the first, tentative steps that humankind - really their governments - took toward international accords, codes of ideas, and cooperative behaviour. It notes those intellectuals and public officials who urged the case for greater global cooperation and even the idea of global governance". It must, therefore, tell the story of the creation, evolution and collapse of the League of Nations as a way of deepening understanding of the ways in which the creation of the UN involved structures and ideas which were to correct the flaws of its predecessor. Kennedy reminds the reader here and then throughout the book that it is far too easy, from the standpoint of current context, to be critical of the UN, the Security Council in particular, of course. It is necessary to understand the post-war context of global power relationships and realities that caused the UN structures and procedures to be created as they were. That is not to say, and Kennedy has a section at the end of the book that outlines possible, desirable and necessary reforms to UN structures and procedures, that there should not be change, he thinks there should. But that change not only needs to be strategic and realistic. It also needs to take into account why things are the way they are. The current global realities and particularly the reality of 'failed states', the cross-border nature of terrorism and the fact that so many of the conflicts around the globe are internal to nation states, need, desperately need, UN processes and procedures to change in order to be effective. Fundamental to Kennedy's book is his belief that in order to make those changes effective, we have to understand why things were set up as they were.
Part Two of the book consists of "...six loosely linked chapters that examine the chief aspects of the world organization's missions and how well or poorly each purpose has been fulfilled in the decades between 1945 and our present times". This thematic approach makes it easier for the reader to appreciate the diversity of function of the UN, another one of Kennedy's strongly-made points throughout the book. It is so helpful to the western reader to be reminded that the UN is perceived of and functions in very different ways and capacities around the world. Kennedy takes all the current criticisms of the Security Council and its failures in such places as Rwanda, very, very seriously. He makes the point though that given the fact that the world's population has tripled since the creation of the UN and the world's economic reality has increased ten-fold, without such an increase being reflected in member states' grants to the UN, the complications under which the world body tries to function may not allow it to do much better. And while taking both the UN's constraints and failures seriously, Kennedy also clearly and articulately points out that life in many southern and developing parts of the world would be almost unimaginably worse without the work of such UN agencies as UNICEF.
And while Kennedy's detail and analysis of such visible UN realities as the Security Council and the role of the Secretary General, the latter of which this reviewer found to be particularly intriguing because of the parallels with her own role, also very helpful is his emphasis on and his reminder of the importance and achievements of what he calls the 'soft agendas' - work on what are often called women's and children's issues, human rights, health and cultural and intellectual affairs. He notes too the importance of such bodies as the Statistical Commission and the effect that it has had on how the world sees the world. We may not have yet been able to solve many of the world's problems in the areas of poverty, lack of resources, illiteracy etc., but we know where they are and the numbers of people affected by them.
Kennedy ends his book with some ideas for a way forward for the UN and many of them resonate strongly with our World Federalist, incremental vision of good, international governance. We may not, as World Federalists agree with some of the specifics he proposes, but we would certainly agree that one of the key questions which frames the whole discussion of the UN past, present and future, of UN reform, is the one that he articulates throughout the book (one of the book's few flaws is a tendency to repetition), the question "How are world citizens and their governments to reconcile universal human rights with claims for state sovereignty?" (Kennedy could perhaps have answered that with reference to the European Union, but remember, he is an American!). He talks about strengthening "...that three-legged stool of peace, development and democracy envisaged sixty years ago". And he talks about doing that by what he sees as the only way forward: "...intelligent, piecemeal reforms such as expanding the size of the Security Council; improving operational effectiveness in all aspects of peacekeeping and peace enforcement; abandoning the Trusteeship Council and the Military Staff Committee (but finding better ways to do their originally designed jobs); shaking up or abolishing the ECOSOC; improving the performance of the human rights [he has no use for a system that allowed Libya to chair the Human Rights Commission], environmental, and cultural agencies; establishing closer coordination with the Bretton Woods and other specialized agencies; and giving the workings and structure of the General Assembly a thorough overhaul". Always remembering, and something that World Federalists must remember in order to be most effective, that the tension in the global reality between sovereignty and internationalism is inherent and persistent, and unavoidable.
And three final points which are heartening to the complexity of this particular reviewer's reality. Kennedy is very affirming of NGOs, not just in his three references to World Federalists, but throughout the book. He sees the crucial import of their expertise and passion as a part of the voice, action and witness of civil society. And very related to this is his affirmation and knowledge of church organizations as important contributors to the reality of NGOs, as one of the key factors in ensuring transparency and awareness in such areas as human rights. And finally, on page 257 of The Parliament of Man, Kennedy commends the Canadians for their establishment of a standing force, ready, willing and able to respond immediately to any Secretary General request for troop contribution. It is, according to this book, in such specific endeavours and in knowing the historical and global realities of the UN's context that '...the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world' has the possibility of moving forward into a future 'lapt in universal law'.