A discussion on the concept of Europe in the context of historical events, mutual benefits to the member states, challenges of integration and the promise of a prominent place in the global political and economic arena.
The following paper discusses the growing awareness among Europeans that only a unified Europe can successfully meet the challenges of the future. The writer argues that only a strong global community, consisting of the European Union, the United States, Russia, China and other major powers of the world, committed to a global goal of growing prosperity, will be able to build a more peaceful future for all mankind.
“For more than half a century the western, integrated part of Europe has lived in peace and freedom and has, along with North America and Japan, formed one of the three most prosperous areas of the world. Just over the past 10 years, construction of a political union among EU member states has made considerable progress and closer cooperation has been established over a whole array of policies from economic and social to security and defense. In 1952 six countries came together out of the rubble of World War II to pool their basic production in the European Coal and Steel Community. The goal then, as now, was to bind Europe so tightly together that another war “becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible,” as founding father Robert Schuman put it.”