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Kalergi, A European spirit must precede Europe's political unification
Page 5
Europe can learn only from a European example - from the Swiss Federation, which has for centuries furnished the laboratory and the testtubes for the European unification experiment. In any time which we care to foresee, for example, there can be no European president on the American model, but only a European directorate with a changing presidency, as in the Swiss Bundesrat. As in Switzerland no canton may nominate more than one of the seven members of the Bundesrat, so the same principle would have to apply for the states of Europe. Similarly the two chambers furnish a model, one of which, the Ständerat furnishes equal representation for all cantons, large and small, and the other, the Nationalrat, equal representation for all Swiss citizens. We can also take as a model the division of the seven common federal offices into the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the War Office, and the Ministries of Commerce, Finance, Communications, and Justice. Further examples for imitation are the division of sovereignty and financial power between the federation and the cantons, and the fundamental rights of Swiss citizens and the safeguards for their equality irrespective of differences of language or religion.
The Swiss federal constitution, adapted to the European order of magnitude and to the different historical development and constitutions of the European states, furnishes the broad lines for the constitution of Paneuropa, the aim of which cannot be achieved at a blow, but which all Europeans must keep before their eyes as a proof that the peoples of Europe can unite when they wish ....
Paneuropa needs no common language for its existence. Switzerland shows that with good will, but without a single language,. understanding and collaboration are possible.
At the same time it would be an enormous advantage for European solidarity if Europe could agree on one speech which every European should learn within the next generation in addition to his mother tongue. In itself it is a matter of indifference which language is chosen by the European governments, but it would be in the interest of European culture that a natural, living language, and not an artificial or a dead language, should be selected. Undoubtedly the English language would be the first to deserve consideration, since it has a wider currency than any other European language, is one of the easiest to learn, and is already in practice the language understood in the world outside Europe. It would be enough to make its study obligatory at first in teaching colleges and secondary schools and only thereafter to extend this study to elementary schools. After one generation a German, a Frenchman, and an Italian could as easily understand each other in English as an educated Japanese, Chinese, and Indian can today. Thus, while national language and national culture would be carefully preserved, the barriers of speech which to-day separate the peoples of Europe and impede reciprocal understanding would disappear.
Cf. Proudhon, Principe Fédératif * Le mémorandum d'Alexis Leger * The Briand Memorandum * La Construction de l'Europe selon Jean Monnet * Plan Fouchet * L'Union Européenne selon Altiero Spinelli * Mitterrand and Kohl urge European Political Union
