alas, the bloody breakdown of Yugoslavia that was to the European Parliament increased its powers. The follow in the 1990s and the shootings and the wars on last chance to push for a European federation was the periphery of the , from the Baltic to made in the mid-1990s when Wolfgang Schäuble and the Caucasus. The organisations which had pacified came up with the idea of a hard core of and strengthened Western Europe after the Second European states. Many European politicians took of- World War extended their area of , democracy fence – as the wanted to concentrate power, and prosperity to most of the newly independent states including military power, within the same single core of what had formerly been the Soviet bloc. Some of of France, Italy… and , excluding the British. the Member States of the European Union certainly Schäuble and Lamers were actually open to discus- hesitated for a while but Germany’s role as an advo- sions – which never took place. cate of Poland in particular was crucial. On the whole, the EU acted in a way that was both incremental and The time was ripe then. Twenty to fifteen years later we innovative, gradually extending its framework, princi- have entered a new phase, where national paradigms ples, governance, laws, and policies and devising a and egos more than the vision of a united Europe dic- network of relations with states which stayed outside tate the mood of the day. Certainly in the year 2000 of it. Chancellor Schröder’s brilliant Minister for Foreign Affairs, Joschka Fischer, dreamt aloud of a closer-knit Certain mistakes however were committed and omis- Europe, at the old University of . But it was a sions made. The main mistake pertained to the military dream, the vision of a private individual as he put it organisation of the continent: Russians and Americans and his Chancellor never committed himself to an ever formally agreed to the inclusion of Germany, and later closer Europe – on the contrary, he was the first to Central and Eastern Europe, within the Atlantic organi- mention Germany’s power and to lambast Brussels’ sation, without the latter however expanding its military use of German money. Europe had missed the train – network beyond what had been the Iron Curtain. France had missed the train.

The omission was about the European Union: at In other words, we can only rejoice that the major up- Maastricht and later, political unification was writ small. heavals of the last decade of the last century hardly led Chancellor Kohl pushed for political unification in ex- to any bloodshed – apart of course from the tragic epi- change for economic and monetary unification, calling sode of the Balkans. The organisation of the continent for an increase in federal powers. However this ruf- used the previous Western, democratic organisations fled more than one set of feathers: François Mitterrand as frameworks. Yet it would be advisable to ponder agreed only to a makeshift political transformation: the two major mistakes which were made: first, totally the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), missing the opportunity to get Russia on board, and European foreign policy, an inter-governmental proc- secondly, imagining what kind of actor the European ess instead of further political integration – even though Union should be in the coming decades.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the EUISS

2 European Union Institute for Security Studies