Secretary General of the Paneuropean Union

It is for me a great pleasure to be here at the opening of the third Rencontre Coudenhove-Kalergi. First of all, I would like to thank the organisers who have undertaken the work of starting after the second Rencontre at once to prepare this third Rencontre which marks for us Paneuropeans a very important event.

It is already for the third time that we meet here and discuss the ideas and the ideals of our founder Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi and how they can be translated into the every day work for the European integration, for the Paneuropean aims.

As Secretary General of this big international organisation, it is for me a great pleasure and satisfaction to see that one of our member organisations, the Swiss Paneuropean Union, can organise such a big international event with such a good participation of all over of our continent.

The President Otto von Habsburg has asked me to bring his greetings to all of you and he wishes this third Rencontre a great and big success.

We meet here at the place where the ideas leading to the European unification in this century have been born, the ideas leading to the European Parliamentary Union and leading at the end to the Council of Europe.

This year, the topic of the Rencontre is very wisely the ideas of the political unification for a larger Europe, for "Gross Europa". This is very important for us today, ten years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, ten years after the fall of the wall in Berlin. It was the Paneuropean Union that marked the beginning of the fall of the Iron Curtain, precisely ten years ago at the Paneuropean Picnic of Sopron, on the border between Hungary and Austria.

The European Union discusses the enlargement, not thinking any longer of Western Europe but including discussions with the newly liberated countries of Central and Eastern Europe. It seems for us today logical that Hungary, Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia directly negotiate about their membership and that the other Baltic States, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and so on and so forth are not far behind, stand in line to join the European Union.

To us it is a part of normality that in the new European Commission there is a Commissioner, Günter Verheugen, who only deals with enlargement and who is the specialist for getting in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. We can only wish him big success.

Ten years after the Picnic, this is all part of normality. Eleven years after we, Paneuropeans, have been called reactionaries and dangerous people because we talked about the unification of the larger Europe. And we were the first ones to dare talking about the real Europe where also the countries that were then still under communist rule would form a part of our common continent.

With this enlargement in view, Europe regains its role in the world. The international focus gets more and more centralised on our continent. And it is no surprise, it comes as no surprise to us that all the other countries want to see our continent, Europe, unified.

It is for us no wonder that we have friends from Japan who participate at this Rencontre, because our founder, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, as you all know, was half Japanese. Japan is one of those countries that really understand the importance of Europe. When I was in Hungary last week to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Picnic, the biggest participation from outside of Europe came from Japan. They not only came to participate, they came to show us their culture, and they came to give this Paneuropean town of Sopron a big present : a little garden marking their wish that Europe really should become unified.

Our Paneuropean programme, as formulated in 1973 after the death of our founder, was formulated, as you all remember, in the four points that we want to have a large Europe, a free Europe, a Europe based on the principle of subsidiarity, and a Europe based on the principle of Christianity. These four principles are getting closer to realisation.

Many of our friends and critics now say : "But why are you still continuing with your work. I mean, all your aims are nearly achieved". But this is not the case. We have to help in the integration. We have to push the development of our continent into the right, into the Paneuropean direction. And for this we need a forum of discussion. This forum of discussion is provided in conferences like this Rencontre Coudenhove-Kalergi.

I want to thank once again the organisers for undertaking this work of setting up this discussion forum for us. For us all, I wish a weekend of fruitful discussions and interesting conclusions.