Norbert Schwaiger is a true veteran of EU summits. Now in his early 70s, the amiable German recalls with relish the triumphs and disasters from 34 years of service in Brussels as if they all happened yesterday. He chats about Delors, Kohl, Mitterrand, Chirac, Thatcher and the great rows with the British over money. The epic moments of European construction, from the Single European Act in 1986 to the Maastricht treaty in 1992 and the birth of the euro in 1999, are all fresh in his mind.
To catch up with Europe’s progress, Schwaiger, a former press officer who retired in 2003, returned to a Brussels summit last week to take the temperature. Much had changed. “The historical idea has faded,” he said wistfully. “When we started it was about Germany and France and the Benelux countries building a new Europe to stop the endless wars. Germany, and that generation of Germans, was ashamed of Hitler. It was about creating security, a secure Europe and a secure economy. Then they wanted to have Europe as their new home country.”
As EU officials from 27 countries milled around the giant Justus Lipsius building, the venue of a summit dominated by the dire economic plight of Greece and the resulting existential threat to the euro and the EU itself, the contrast in mood could not have been starker from the heyday of integration that Schwaiger had known.
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The threat is really hanging over the future of the EU because the same old trends continue – more credit and guarantees in exchange for further conditions. I am afraid the crisis will only escalate and the EU will make it more probable that some donor countries finally withdraw from these rescue packages.