History and
Aims
In 1923 Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi wrote
his prophetic document
Paneuropa, in which he presented an alternative to the pessimistic
view of
civilisation: a united Europe.The best men of his time followed him. Aristide
Briand was among his closest collaborators. But National Socialist barbarism
smashed these hopeful beginnings. Coudenhove fled from Hitler´s dictatorship.
Later, Otto von Habsburg joined the movement and was soon to become one of the
leading representatives of the Paneuropean idea.
Coudenhove warned the Western governments of Soviet plans for conquest in vain;
during the Yalta conference in 1945, Central and Eastern Europe was delivered to
Communist dictatorship.Nevertheless, after World War Two, the ideas of the
Paneuropean Movement were successful in the Western world: the Council of
Europe, the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic
Community represented great steps forward to unification.
After Coudenhove´s death in 1973 these achievements seemed endangered. Europe
was split, unification stagnated and Communism gained ground while the West
dreamt of détente. It was then that the newly elected president, Otto von
Habsburg, decided to turn the Paneuropean Union into a broad, popular movement.
Intensive basic activities were started within all European countries. More and
more people found their way to the Paneuropean Movement to fight for a free and
united Paneurope. From the time of the first direct election to the European
Parliament in 1979, the Paneuropean Movement has been an effective link between
Europeans and their Parliament in Strasbourg. Paneuropean programmes became
pioneers of actual European policy. Awareness that Europe did not end at the
Yalta-Line became general.
The Paneuropean picnic at the Austrian-Hungarian
border on August 19, 1989, tore
the first hole in the Iron Curtain, and heralded the end of Europe´s partition.
Today the idea of o free, complete and united Europe is approaching realisation.
If we bend all our energies to achieving this, it is possible that the new
century will bring a prolonged era of peace, liberty, security and prosperity
such as Europe has never known.