No European state can play by itself a sufficiently important role globally to be recognized. Europe, within the borders of the European Union, represents 7% of the global population. Global processes can only be influenced when they act together, Prof. Dr. Norbert Lammert, former President of the German Bundestag and current Chair of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, stated in an interview with IPN Agency.
According to Norbert Lammert, Germany is recognized and can have an influence beyond the European continent, in an international context, it is largely due to its membership in the European Community. “The process of European unification was of particular importance for Germany’s new political and economic beginning after World War II. Germany’s return to the European and international community of states was not only accompanied over time by this process of European unification, but it would not have been possible without this inclusion in a common European development,” he stated.
The former President of the German Bundestag said that it was not a controversial process at first. A considerable part of the German public, the political system, including the system of competing parties, perceived the decision of Konrad Adenauer, the founding chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, in favor of Germany’s inclusion in the European community of states as a refusal of the restoration of German unity, and therefore advocated a neutral position rather than the country’s inclusion in the Western community of states. Konrad Adenauer and the Christian Union he led at the time were convinced that the road to the restoration of German unity passed through Europe.
Norbert Lammert also said that Germany’s economic development, which many considered an “economic miracle|, was also largely linked to its membership in a large common market, which went far beyond the borders of the own country and which led to more and more states, initially Western European ones, wanting to join it and the community of states associated with it.
Asked when European unity became truly tangible for German citizens, Norbert Lammert said that it was a process that began very early, when, with the establishment of the European Economic Community and the signing of the Treaties of Rome, many young employees dismantled, together with their French equals, the barriers that existed on the borders between Germany and France. At that time, there was a great spirit of optimism and determination to put an end to the rivalries that had plagued Europe for decades and centuries, and when the Treaties of Rome were adopted and the European Economic Community was founded, it quickly became a model of success.
