Paneurope - the Parent Idea of a United Europe

The history of the Pan-European Union is closely associated with the names of two prominent personalities: with its founder Richard Graf Coudenhove-Kalergi (1894-1972) and his successor as International President, Dr Otto von Habsburg (1912-2011).

Coudenhove first formulated the vision of a politically, economically and militarily united Europe in the article "Pan-Europa – a proposal" on 15 November 1922 in the "Vossische Zeitung" Berlin, and this appeared two days later in the Vienna newspaper "Neue Freie Presse". In 1923, he wrote his programmatic book "Pan-Europa", which he described as the starting signal for a "great political movement". Coudenhove envisaged the inter-war period of Europe as having an alternative "integration or collapse." Even in 1923, he vehemently warned against the "future war" and of the danger that Europe, after the war, would be "divided" by an artificial border "into a Soviet colony and an American protectorate."

Coudenhove's proposal quickly found support among admirers and supporters in the leading circles of European intellectuals, poets and philosophers: Paul Claudel, Paul Valéry, Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig, Gerhart Hauptmann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Werfel, Arthur Schnitzler, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein and the philosophers Ortega y Gasset and Salvador de Madariaga supported the Pan-European idea as well as the composer Richard Strauss. The young mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer who was later to become German Chancellor and the Viennese student and subsequent socialist Federal Chancellor of Austria, Bruno Kreisky, were among the first members. Reactions in official political circles were however, lukewarm to negative.

Political support came from Austria's Federal Chancellor Ignaz Seipel, who himself adopted the Austrian presidency of the Pan-European Committee. Paul Loebe, the Social Democratic Reichstag President adopted the presidency of the German Pan-European group. In the same year, Coudenhove manged to win over the French minister president and foreign minister Edouard Herriot for the Pan-European idea in Paris. Thanks to the attraction of his ideas and his personality, the young private citizen who had neither power nor money, managed to open doors in all the capitals of Europe.

In 1926, the first Pan-European Congress took place in Vienna with 2000 participants from 24 nations as the public breakthrough for the young movement with the "Pan-European vision" becoming a synonym for the political unification of Europe. Coudenhove was elected the first International President of the Pan-European Union by acclamation. Europe's most respected statesman, the French foreign minister Aristide Briand, became honorary president of the movement in 1927. On 5 September 1929, in a speech before the League of Nations in Geneva, Briand proposed the creation of a federation of European nations at the insistence of Coudenhove-Kalergi. The initiative of a single man became a real political option and the Pan-European movement became an influential organised association on a Pan-European basis.

After the failure of the Briand initiative, Coudenhove led the struggle further – no longer in an offensive position, but defensively, against the growing tide of communism and fascism. At the 3rd Pan-European Congress in Basle 1932 Coudenhove warned: "Stalin is preparing the civil war – Hitler the peoples war". Hitler saw Coudenhove and the Pan-European idea a dangerous adversary. Coudenhove held his last speech in Germany on the 30 January 1933 in Berlin, the same day as Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the Reich. In the same year, Pan-European literature was banned in Germany and the German Pan-European Union was dissolved. German industry stopped its financial support and backed the side of Hitler. Coudenhove also lost the support of most of the leftist intellectual supporters, who in the fight against Hitler, directed their hopes towards the Soviet Union. At the same time, the Pan-European Union tightened its rejection of communism. In 1938, Coudenhove fled from the Nazis, first to Switzerland in 1940 and then to the United States. In exile, Coudenhove met Otto von Habsburg, who lived in Washington from 1940 to 1944.

In the USA, Coudenhove developed the idea of a "European Constituent Assembly" for the post war period. After the Western Allies missed the chance, to set up a parliament as a cornerstone of the new order in Western Europe and initially to reorganise Western Europe Assembly on the basis of nation states, in 1947 Coudenhove set up the first congress of the European Parliamentary Union in the Swiss resort of Gstaad, which established that the Council of Europe, established in 1949, was not only to be a Council of Ministers but as a second body, was to contain a consultative parliamentary assembly. Through this, the history of European parliamentarism begun.

In 1950, the city of Aachen awarded the father of the Pan-European idea the first international Charlemagne award (Karlspreis). Shortly thereafter, the European Parliamentary Union merged with the European Movement which was established by Winston Churchill's son-in-law, Duncan Sandys. The European Movement elected Coudenhove-Kalergi as its honourary president, who was the only private citizen alongside politicians such as Konrad Adenauer, Winston Churchill, Alcide de Gasperi, Robert Schuman and Henry Spaak.

Coudenhove focused on the revitalisation of the Pan-European Union as the political vanguard of European patriots. The new constitution was launched at the 6th Pan-European Congress in Baden-Baden in 1954. Although in the fifties, the Pan-European Union welcomed the 1957 Treaty of Rome (establishing the EEC and Euratom) as an important step towards the realisation of Pan-Europe, Coudenhove and his staff warned against joining up Europe in a way which was based on unilateral economic policy.

At the 8th Pan-European Congress in Bad Ragaz, Otto von Habsburg was elected to the Central Council of the Pan-European Union and soon afterwards, as the vice president of Coudenhove-Kalergi, proposed himself as the successor in the Office of President.

The question of whether the plan launched by the French President Charles de Gaulle and the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer for a European federation of states (the so-called Fouchet plan) would pave the way for or prevent the European federal state, split the European movements. At its 9th international Congress in Nice in 1960, the Pan-European Union clearly sided with de Gaulle, who had already been linked to the Pan-European idea of Coudenhove since 1941. De Gaulle's European policy finally caused a split between the Pan-European Movement and the 'European Union'. Coudenhove-Kalergi took part as the guest of the General in the highly symbolic Franco-German reconciliation ceremony in 1962, at which Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle met in Reims.

In France, the Pan-European Union was founded by the later president Georges Pompidou and, on the initiative of President de Gaulle himself, Louis Terrenoire, an active member of the résistance, deputy of the National Assembly and subsequent Minister under de Gaulle. The Union achieved high prestige and political influence. Under the international Secretary-General Vittorio Pons, who supported Coudenhove-Kalergi in daily political operations, the Pan-European Union spread to all countries in Western Europe.

On 27 July 1972, Coudenhove-Kalergi died in Vorarlberg.

On a proposal by the French President George Pompidou, Otto von Habsburg was elected as the International President of the Pan-European Union in 1973 and new aims were set for the movement: The idea of liberating Central and Eastern Europe from communist oppression – as a precondition of genuine European integration in the sense of a united Europe and the defence of Christian values / the spirit of Christian teaching in relation to how mankind is meant to be in an increasingly materialistic age. Concluded on 11 -12 May 1973, the Strasbourg Declaration of Basic Principles formulated the aims of the Pan-European Union which remain valid for almost two decades until the victory of freedom in Central Europe. Otto von Habsburg steered the Pan-European Union as a Europe-wide broad-based movement. Alongside the French, Belgian and Luxembourg sections, the Pan-European Unions in Austria and Germany played an increasingly important role at the intersection of the Iron Curtain. From 1975, numerous Pan-European youth organisations were created in Germany, Austria, Spain, Italy and Belgium under the direction of Walburga von Habsburg and the later MEP Bernd Posselt.

The Pan-European Union used the first direct elections to the European Parliament to launch an international campaign for a politically and militarily united, strong Europe. which was to be Christian-oriented. Headed by Otto von Habsburg, numerous leading Pan-Europeans took up their seats in the newly elected European Parliament in Strasbourg. In her opening speech, the French writer Louise Weiss, a former President of the Parliament and Pan-European member, welcomed Otto von Habsburg as the successor of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi.

At the same time, under the leadership of Bernd Posselt and Walburga von Habsburg, the Pan-European Union strengthened its work as a special representative of the international office beyond the Iron Curtain and established contacts with civil rights organisations in Poland such as the trade union "Solidarnosc", "Charter 77" and church institutions as well as in Hungary, in former Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia as well as in the Baltic states. Pan-European underground work received a boost through the strong support of the Polish Pope John Paul II and Bishop of Augsburg Josef Stimpfle, who were connected throughout their lives to the Pan-European movement. On 24 November 1986, the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the Pan-European Union made a joint declaration for overcoming the division of Germany and Europe.

At the "Pan-European Picnic" in August 1989 on the Austrian-Hungarian border near Sopron / Ödenburg, the first tears were made in the Iron Curtain and over 650 Germans from the "GDR" reach the West. Mass demonstrations in the "GDR" and general strikes in other Central European countries followed and with the collapse of the communist regime in the autumn and winter of 1989, the goal of a reunified Pan-Europe was within reach. Central European leaders such as Vaclav Havel in the Czech Republic, Vitautas Landsbergis in Lithuania or France Bučar in Slovenia supported the Pan-European work which was done in their countries and took on leading functions. Pan-European organisations were set up in all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

In December 1990, the International General Assembly of the Pan-European Union met in Prague, the first time this summit was held in a former Soviet bloc country. The Pan-European Union actively set about supporting the rapid accession of the liberated countries of Central and Eastern Europe to the European Union, which in a first phase, became reality on 1 May 2004, with the accession of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia. The Pan-European Union also actively supported the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union, which took place on 1 January 2007,  as well as for the speedy accession of Croatia, which joind the European Union on 1 July 2013.

Regarding the Convention on a draft European Constitutional Treaty, the Pan-European Union gave the President of the Convention Valéry Giscard d'Estaing concrete proposals which have mainly been included in the treaty text of the European Constitution.

In December 2004, Otto von Habsburg retired as the International President of the Pan-European Union aged 92 and proposed as his successor, the French European politician Alain Terrenoire who unanimously elected by gathered delegates from over 20 Pan-European member organisations in Strasbourg. Otto von Habsburg became honorary president of the international movement, which he led for over three decades. Alain Terrenoire, the third president in the history of the Pan-European Union also set ambitious future objectives for the movement: The completion of the geographical and political unification of all of Europe within the European Union and its development into a strong superpower of peace capable of acting internationally.

Today, members of the Pan-European Union are people from all age groups and social strata who are committed to a politically, economically and militarily united Europe as a community of law, peace, freedom and Christian values. The Pan-European Union supports the political integration of Europe in the areas of internal and external security, technology and research as well as a comprehensive European constitutional treaty for the European Union. It is committed to an independent European defence policy in partnership with NATO. In the face of the advancing globalisation, the Pan-European Union advocates joint and self-confindent action by the European Union in international politics.

Under the leadership of the three-member Presidency, MEP Lukas Mandl from Austria, MEP Marie Walsh from Ireland and MEP Karl Ressler from Croatia, Pan-European Parliamentary Group in the European Parliament consists of dozens of members from almost all the member states of the European Union. They meet regularly during the convocation of the European Parliament in Strasbourg and organise round tables, meetings, lectures and forums.