The Gazette 1992

JUNE 1992

GAZETTE

Uni f ied Germany 's Role in Europe

new, very dynamic period of development. In 1986 we had the Single European Act bringing about constitutional change for the first time since the TVeaty of Rome by introducing more majority voting and by increasing the competence of some Community institutions. The 1992 process therefore not only created a new economic momentum but also a legal momentum. In the economic area, in 1985 there remained 283 pieces of legislation requiring adoption to complete the internal market. Seventy-one are now in operation and another 213 are fully adopted and have yet to come into force. Many of these 213 will come into force on 1 January of next year. Thken together they will transform our economic environment. Free movement of goods, capital, services and people is a radical societal change, which by reason of ostensible gradualism of introduction is not now seen for what it is. In fact, in historic terms what has been achieved has taken place at an incredibly rapid pace. "Why therefore, does one look to the future with some degree of concern? Events are changing so rapidly before our eyes that it is very difficult to know what is around the corner. When we had an Iron Curtain there were confines within which Europe, and the Community, had to exist. There was not the problem of large- scale enlargement with its potential to dilute what the essence of the Community is. The removal of the Iron Curtain has led to a list of countries applying for membership. Today Austria, Sweden, Finland, Malta and Cyprus are among those actually applying for membership. I think that the next country to apply will be Switzerland. This is going to lead to huge strain because it is going to require further constitutional change. Will Ireland be left with a Commissioner at the end of this, for example? Will the Community have

supremacy of Community law which is the essence of what the EC is about. Mr. Sutherland said the fundamental issue facing the Community - and it was a political issue - was the sharing of sovereignty and the right of the Community to override national legislation in the common good and in the context of agreed objectives. The fundamental objective therefore was to bring about a more integrated Community. An example of the history of this process and of the practical implications of it could be seen in terms of the relationship between Ireland and Germany. "The fact is that we have 155 German manufacturing companies in Ireland, our exports to are double that of our imports from Germany. Additionally we have had an enormous increase in terms of the numbers of German people who visit Ireland; some 200,000 German people visited Ireland during the course of the last year. I do not attribute all of this to the fact that we are part of the same Community but I do say that the Community is an essential part of a process of bringing people together which is important not merely in social terms but in economic terms." EC at turning point Mr. Sutherland said that he believed that the Community was at a turning point and probably at the most perilous moment in terms of its own development. " I f one looks at the history of the EEC, the first period up to 1973 was the period when the basic legal principles were set down and some of the basic policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy were developed. Between 1973 and 1985 we had the two oil shocks. During this time there was not a great deal of movement in structural or constitutional terms in the

At the Law Society's Annual Conference in Berlin, two speakers, the former Attorney General and EC Commissioner, Peter Sutherland SC, and the Irish Ambassador to Germany, His Excellency Padraig Murphy, offered insights to the role Germany had played in the development of the EC and what the unified Germany's role would be in "All we have is the law" In his address to the conference, Peter Sutherland traced the significant contribution that Germany had made to the development of the European Community. " It was Conrad Adenauer who had pursued the issue of the sharing of national sovereignty - and the generosity that that involved in terms of people's attitudes to other people - which gave birth to the coal and steel community and later the TVeaty of Rome and the development of the EC. It was President Halstein, a German who was the first president of the European Commission, who made the comment "we do not have divisions, all we have is the law". This concept of the rule of law has underpinned and created the structure which has allowed the European Community to develop. Its evolution was based on a perspective that did not envisage nationhood or nationality as causes to be aggressively propounded. Rather the founders saw the Community as being based on a certain sense of self respect and also respect for the identity of others combined with a recognition of the possibility of creating a supra national fusion. The German contribution to the development of the Community was therefore significantly based on law. Indeed it is the principle of the Europe. Extracts from their addresses are published below.

development of the EC. Then in the latter half of 1984 and the launching of the 1992 process, we started into a

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