Shaping Europe, Not Just Managing It

The 47th Pan-European Days of the Pan-European Union Germany took place from 18 to 20 June 2021 under the patronage of Jean-Claude Juncker, former President of the EU Commission, in Trier and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

In Trier's Europahalle, the oldest European unification movement, founded in 1922, honoured the former President of the EU Commission Jean-Claude Juncker with the special level of the Pan-Europa Medal of Merit.

Both Mr Juncker and the President of the Pan-European Union Germany, CSU European politician Bernd Posselt, clearly criticised the current state of the EU, which they want to massively strengthen in terms of foreign and security policy by developing it into a genuine supranational democracy.

Posselt called on the European Parliament and, above all, the current EU Commission to show more unity and fighting power against the national egoism of the member states. Those who undermine the European legal community are taking an axe to Europe's ability to assert itself as a whole.

Juncker criticised the events following the last European elections, when the successful lead candidate Manfred Weber did not become Commission President: ‘First of all, the European Parliament made big cheeks and then lay on its stomach in front of the governments that wanted to regain their power.’ The disappointment over this must now be used to bring about a push for integration in Europe. ‘The relevant forces must once again agree on the consensus corridor that made the EU strong: Human rights, social responsibility and respect for European legal rules.’

The two leading representatives of the international Pan-European Union, President Alain Terrenoire from Paris and Secretary General Pavo Barišić from Zagreb, also gave rousing speeches.

Prof Pavo Barišić, former Croatian Minister of Science and Education and a globally recognised theorist of democracy as a philosopher of state, discussed the personality and teachings of Karl Marx, an honorary citizen of Trier. He articulated the unease that the numerous guests from the Central and Eastern European countries still felt years after the fall of the Marxist dictatorship. At its 100th anniversary in 2022, the international Pan-European Union will emphasise the two central messages of its founder Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, namely unification and peace. These are still of burning relevance. Barišić, who had travelled to the event together with Bishop Franjo Komarica of Banja Luka, Chairman of the Bishops' Conference of Bosnia-Herzegovina, inspired the audience with his outlook on a Pan-European project that is currently being implemented in the region, which was particularly hard hit by the war in the 1990s. In the former Trappist monastery of Maria Stern, the bishop is building an education and meeting centre with the Europe-wide support of the Pan-European Union, which will serve intercultural, interreligious and interconfessional dialogue - in a Pan-European spirit.

Alain Terrenoire warned Europe of the downfall of its civilisation if it does not learn to speak with one voice on the major issues of world politics. It is not enough to talk about geopolitics, he said, it must be translated into joint European action. Terrenoire used his family background to make a very personal commitment to Europe. His grandmother was a German Jew from Koblenz and had adopted the Catholic faith in France. In the 1920s, his grandfather and his father were involved in the efforts of Aristide Briand, then Honorary President of the International Pan-European Union and French Foreign Minister, to make a first European attempt to prevent the Second World War, which they feared. As General Secretary of the French Resistance movement, his father Louis Terrenoire was then imprisoned in the Dachau and Kempten concentration camps, so that he, Alain, only got to know him as a four-year-old after his liberation by the Allies. On behalf of General de Gaulle, Louis Terrenoire refounded the French Pan-European Union after the Second World War and negotiated the Franco-German Elysée Treaty of 1963 as rapporteur in the National Assembly. ‘As his assistant, I myself got to know a young interpreter from the Franco-German Youth Organisation that was set up as a result, who was a displaced Silesian and entered into a Franco-German marriage with me. Our daughter now lives in Munich and has just given birth to a German grandson.’ Like Juncker, Terrenoire was celebrated with prolonged applause.

• Programme (DE) (PDF)
• Press release (DE) (PDF)