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Europe Day 2017: My #EU60 story, Juan Menéndez-Valdés
My #EU60 story
In 1957, when European leaders were signing the Treaty of Rome, my parents were a newly married couple setting up house in Spain. My father warned against spending too much on the (coal) kitchen as “butano” domestic gas should be soon available in our country. He had recently seen that handy development in France, just a few kilometres away from the village in the Pyrenees where they had met. At that time in that area, goods were being smuggled over the border and exiled Spaniards were crossing clandestinely on a regular basis. The wounds of a civil war where relatives and neighbours shot each other from both sides of the trenches were still painful. Those were the dark years of Spanish dictatorship, when Europe opened only at the other side of the frontier. It was beyond those high mountains that there was freedom and progress – and orange butane bottles.
I myself was born in the more privileged baby-boom sixties, where a rapidly growing Spanish economy saw increasing number of families driving their ‘Seat 600’, and cooking without gas was almost inconceivable. There was also wider access to education and welfare. But Europe still began beyond the border. They - the Europeans (we even excluded ourselves from this category) - enjoyed not just peace and economic growth, but freedom, democracy and unrivalled social progress.
As we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, I feel sometimes outraged by the post-truth allegations about the European Union. Poverty, unemployment, social dumping, inequalities, weakened public services, the deterioration of living and working standards; all, it would seem, a direct result of the EU. Or so they would have us believe. Clearly, recent years have seen us battle the deepest economic and social crisis since the war, and we are still confronted with unemployment, social inclusion challenges and security threats. But as the director of an EU Agency whose mission is to provide high-quality, reliable evidence to policy makers, I call on us all to honestly examine the facts and figures at hand.
And looking at the facts – while in no way underplaying the many serious challenges facing us today - there can be very little doubt about the huge progress realised by European integration. We have dismantled most frontiers on a continent where one can cross borders without custom controls, buy and sell with the same currency and carry consumer protection rights across countries. We can study and work abroad, have our qualifications recognised across frontiers and access medical assistance in any European city using an EU health card. The list goes on. …
Despite the incomplete architecture of the Euro, the common currency can boast in part at least an intense period of growth and economic convergence and net gains in terms of growth and employment, since its creation. We have reached the highest number of people at work in Europe (albeit persistently unacceptable unemployment levels in some countries). We have seen the highest proportion of women integrated in the labour market and increasing. We managed to maintain and further extend, as visible in the recent Social Pillar initiative, features that make Europe a Social Model for the world. Take the examples of working time, substantially reduced and open to much more flexible use, the still longest paid holiday and maternity leaves guaranteed in the world, a strong social partnership that empowers employers and workers to shape, through social dialogue, a fair and competitive working environment. The Union has also facilitated more cohesion. Countries with the lowest living and working standards have gradually approached those at the top. We have seen life expectancy increase in 14 years, and we report amongst the highest levels of life satisfaction in the world.
With facts and figures at hand, we can show that the EU, notwithstanding the ongoing challenges, not least in the social area or in terms of the need to rebuild citizens’ trust or indeed the growing security threat, has walked a long and successful road to ensuring peace, freedom, prosperity and social progress. This has been possible through joining forces, sharing and building together, demonstrating that the whole can always achieve more than the sum of its parts. And it is precisely our shared understanding of this history which confirms my profound belief that this same unity of strength will guide us through the challenges ahead, together.
Juan Menéndez-Valdés
Director, Eurofound
