Europe: to re-found the Union

A Guarani saying frequently quoted
by Adolfo Pérez Esquivel


It is urgent, I have repeated on several occasions, to proceed to a real European Union re-foundation on the ethical basic essentials of 1950. In order to know where we want to go, to establish accurately the "road map" and never come back to start the European structure from the housetop (as it has been don conducting a monetary union without an economic union and, what is worse, without a prior political union) it is crucial to review properly where we come from: to see the basis of the Coal and Steel Treaty,... to read the pronouncements of its architects and reread the Agreements that were signed...

What did Robert Schumann, Jean Monnet, Konrad Adenauer... proclaim? That it was necessary to find spaces of understanding, reconciliation... always inspired by democratic principles that would lead Europe, in order that conflicts were never more solved by force. "We must be able to invent new ways of governance," as underscored Schumann...

Today is unextendable to establish an autonomous security and rapidly decrease armament expenditures, with a new vision of what must be done to ensure the defense through alliances, especially within the United Nations framework. And without delay, conclude political and economic Treaties to replace markets for a sustainable human development and stock values for ethical values.

Within the 2014-2020 Framework Programme, it is necessary to strengthen the major topics that Europe requires for a different future in the "2020 horizon": health, nutrition, water, environment, energy, education, solidarity, R&D and Innovation and, in particular, proper preventive measures.

The current cuts - also in the European Union! - of funds for academic exchange and scientific research do not offer precisely the best omens... It is essential to re-found the European Union within "democratic principles" that UNESCO enshrines in its Constitution and that in 1950 laid the basis of a regional agreement project. Every human being equal in dignity and so every European. It is not the economically powerful Europe which will play the historic role it deserves in the historical shift we live but the socially powerful Europe. The wealthiest are the ones who should remember that the social security of the others is their own.

Quickly, re-found the European Union.