The European Union, a unique voluntary association of democratic countries, needs to continue to evolve if it wants to strengthen its influence on the international stage and protect itself against harmful developments in a changing world. The kinds of challenges being faced today are dramatically different from those that existed when the process of European unification began. As a result, after what have been fifty rather successful years of integration, the EU now needs to engage in a process of renewal.
The European Union is a political union and needs a foundational document with clear and understandable rules. The EU constitutional treaty, which has already been signed by all the EU governments and ratified by a majority of them, continues to offer the best basis for this. The German government will do everything it can to attain the goal set by the European Council in June 2006 to find a way to continue the constitutional process and conclude it successfully. In doing so the German government would like to open up the way for new dynamism in the process of European unification.
The "Berlin Declaration" of the EU heads of state and government on March 25, 2007 will attempt to provide an orientation with regard to EU values and tasks. The debate will then continue; everyone is called upon to take part in it. An exchange of this kind on the historical and cultural foundations of the European idea and on European interests will strengthen Europe's sense of unity, based on shared values and convictions. Europe will only succeed if we shape it together. History has not given us Europe as something finished and definitive. Europe can only be what the European nations and their governments make of it.
The external contours of the EU need to be defined more sharply. A political entity without borders is not viable. We must not take on more than we can handle in completing the process of unifying the continent; our responsibility for the identity of Europe requires this. At the same time, a new "iron curtain" must not be established on the EU's external borders. A form of good-neighborly relations, based on shared values, should be developed that would help guarantee security and prosperity for countries that cannot be admitted as full members.
The EU will need to show that it can shape policy in accordance with its values and interests in a globalized world. Germany will use its weight and the confidence it enjoys in the world to help shape a common foreign and security policy that is developed as far as possible. The EU will expand its partnership with its neighboring continent, Africa.
Energy and climate change are key issues in the 21st century. Europe needs a European energy policy in light of its strong dependency on energy imports. Europe needs to promote measures at the national and global levels aimed at preventing climate change and to do justice to its role as a world leader on this issue. Germany will also need to focus on this issue in the G8 framework.
Terrorist attacks and organized crime make it necessary for police and public prosecutors to engage in cross-border cooperation. The EU is guided in this by rules protecting personal freedoms. Refugee dramas and illegal immigration to Europe concern us all and require a common European response.
A renewal of the EU will take time. With this in mind, Germany intends to work closely with the ensuing presidencies, held by Portugal and Slovenia, in a "troika" arrangement, the first of its kind, over a period of eighteen months, with a view to strengthening the continuity of European policy.
Europe will only be able to thrive, if its people identify with the magnificent idea of European unification and the historically unique European peace project. Only the people can bring to life the European idea of unity in diversity. The German government wants to help create new confidence in European institutions and strengthen popular approval of European integration.
