The New Europeans

Abstract

Fifty years after Jean Monnet penned in 1943 his ideas for a united states of Europe the Single Market will formally, if not in every detail, have been completed. Many British managers and sales executives, however, will be ‘newcomers’ to the Single Market and the wider European marketplace, having lived apart from Europe in body and in spirit all their lives. Others may have travelled to and from the Continent several times, though without absorbing much of the business atmosphere. There are those, too, who do not even think about European unity, and doubt that it will have any noticeable bearing on their lives. Recent political developments in Europe, however, have been of epic dimensions and must have convinced at least some of the sceptics of the reality of European unity. The sheer force of events has compelled everyone to look beyond British shores to witness the political map of Europe being redrawn. The dismantling of the Berlin wall, the re-unification of the two Germanies, the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, and the Russian-German co-operation pact of 1990 were events of monumental importance, resulting from a new mood of conciliation which had swept through Europe, taking millions of citizens by surprise. These events have clarified modern aims and values which the peoples of Europe are, in the main, determined to share. The reluctant British, it seems, and the newly liberated East Europeans, are also ready to become members of the international business community.