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Acceptance Speech by Dr Árpád Göncz,
Former President of the Republic of Hungary,
on the occasion of the "Vision for Europe" Award Ceremony
on 27 November 2000

Today is rooted in yesterday. And tomorrow is rooted in today: the present in the past and the future in the present.

History knows no boundaries.

Our world of experience is but the complexity of our history stretched over time. It contains the world of our ascendants as a past already accomplished and the world of our descendants as a future full of potential. It embraces the dreams we cherish about our immediate and more distant environment: i.e. our vision of Europe, too.

After all, Europe is the house we dwell in, the street we walk in, the country we live in. This is the Europe that looks onto the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural Mountains on the eastern horizon at the same time.

Is it all one world?

I daresay, yes, it is. But then again - I wonder. Where I draw the frontiers of Europe is not a question of geography. It stretches as far as the boundaries of my world of experience, to the point where I can still identify with the events taking place on its soil, to the frontiers my mind can hold. And the same goes for all those who have shared my fate.

Our Hungarian ancestors tried way back a thousand years ago to discover whether there was a place where to seek refuge from the onslaught of the East. There was no place. The European house was already full. For a thousand years the Carpathian Basin seemed to be the flood plain of the East. The deluge from the East was always held up here, at the foot of Vienna. This is where the Turkish stopped short, and this is where the Russian troops ground to a halt in the Second World War. Europe implicitly acquiesced but Hungary had a hard time facing the fact that the country was a flood plain. Reluctantly, the country came to terms with the painful truth; that no one would offer an insurance policy to cover a flood plain. Not even Europe next door.

Living on a flood plain is something else. It is a constant awareness of danger, anxious defencelessness, a state of alert to keep you ready for the struggle against the current whatever it takes.

This people of the Carpathian Basin did not share in the fundamental experience that brought Europe together: the discovery of America, either. The discovery that stretched the limits of Europe "to the end of the world", to South America for the Latin part of Europe and to North America for the rest, turning the Atlantic Ocean into the inland sea of Europe. Meanwhile, Hungary, left unaffected by the discovery, fought its life-and-death struggle for 150 years against the great power of the Mediterranean, the Turkish onslaught hungry for the heart of Europe.

Consequently, the Atlantic Ocean was but something beyond the sidelines of its consciousness. It was much more Mediterranean Sea that played a dominant role in its game of tug-of-war. The Turks posed a real threat of setting in motion the deluge. Precisely at a time when the West as we know it today took shape, by no means consciously but with a natural ease taken for granted.

It is understandable, therefore, the Carpathian Basin - and due to its geographical situation, Central and Eastern Europe, which constituted a hinterland - was late in creating and developing its system of institutions, state organisations, culture and way of life that the European Union takes for granted as its very own. Yet, the two parts of Europe share a common system of beliefs and values, and differ only in their world of experience. What is self-evident for Western Europe has long been an example to follow, a goal to reach or an object of envy in Central and Eastern Europe. All this despite the fact that this region itself followed Charlemagne's principles in becoming a building block of common European progress, only to diverge at a later stage - albeit, on a historical time scale and according to our hopes, not for too long.

If what I said in the beginning holds true, namely that today is rooted in yesterday, it goes for all the peoples of similar fates in the region as well as for ourselves. This is so because their yesterdays, their collective consciousness, were shaped by similar experiences. This is true for the southern edge of the Carpathian Basin just as it is true for the whole zone stretching between the Carpathian Basin and the Baltic region. It is true for the conscious and unconscious political ambitions and the sense of danger of these peoples. For their desires too, which they tend to share in common and most of which are now fanned by the as-yet unfading bitter experiences of the past fifty years, the latest, hardly completed advances of the East and the unification of Western Europe spurred by the danger from the East as well as its own progress.

And the phenomenal technical-scientific development of the second half of the 20th century, which has made invisible the frontiers between countries in the West. What is more, it has done the same even with the frontiers between persons, as the development of information technology has transformed the concept of distance and the system of our everyday relations, making mobility between human communities a lot easier. Today, on an average day, a person connected to tens of thousands of others; he unconsciously uses the products of thousands of production plants and most of his daily food intake originates from other regions of the world. He moves with natural ease as he makes use of scientific achievements with a bearing on the whole of human knowledge. He is caught up in the indestructible fabric of some boundless social community irrespective of his social position or schooling.

This does not mean, of course, that there is no collective memory or national tradition that imperceptibly fence in, and bind, a given community.

All in all, frontiers continue to exist unchanged today, but the "notion" of a frontier is steadily changing. Translated into everyday language, this means that communities with the same past and fate are growing increasingly conscious and their co-operation is all the more imperative. Economic processes have become more and more international in nature. The circles of the world of human experiences grow ever wider and fade into one another. The European Union has been created. Not only in legal and political terms, but also in Man's consciousness too. Its enlargement is no smooth sailing, though. It must combat millennial conditioning, running into invisible walls; while clearly recognised need struggles with psychological barriers.

Both can be understood; today is the battlefield of the receding forces of yesterday and the recognised tug of tomorrow. No doubt, yesterday stands to lose on this battlefield, and tomorrow is the natural winner. It is also unquestionably true that the triumphal march of tomorrow is flanked by the wrecks of genuine values; emotions, traditions, noble passions, cultural achievements, legitimate national pride - the historical legacy of centuries past now irretrievably shed.

Yet undoubtedly, new values take shape with visible regularity along the way leading to tomorrow; today practically unknown branches of science, trade and cultural ties that facilitate our existence, personal contacts and realisations. I could go on no end. The only reason why I will not is because futurology is risky business; it makes a lot of promises but may not keep them all.

The vision of Europe, a real Europe, is becoming more probable by the day. Not a day passes that some kind of promise is not honoured, though each one brings its own disappointment too, still owing us the long-awaited fulfilment of some promise or another. Each day does and undoes, impoverishes and enriches. On the one hand it makes us conscious of something that is common, on the other hand it makes us recognise and protect something we have to date considered disposable but which may turn into a treasure, the object of our pride, from tomorrow. Just like the cradle in which our grandmother rocked our mother in a poor peasant home. The visitors from afar gape at it and have no idea that it was only yesterday that we bought it down from the attic. And what for them is but a quaint object for us is the somewhat painfully guarded but eminently useful memory of our grandmother.

My picture of Europe is a changing picture. Whatever is genuinely of the past in it is slowly turning into a piece of art treasure. The sense of natural nationality is becoming an object of pride and self-consciousness. Co-operation between countries looses its poignancy; joint legislation pales into an everyday routine and ceases to be tortuous intellectual and political test of strength.

And my country here in the Carpathian Basin all of a sudden turns from flood plain into arable land with predicable yields that are no longer risky to insure, as this no longer means a disproportionate venture for the insurance agency. Just like our NATO membership for the Atlantic Community. Just like the EU membership of the Central and East European countries for the countries on the other side of Europe. They no longer have to fear that the deluge will wash away the historical barriers towering between them for centuries, since a new, expandable line of defence built with concerted efforts now defends all of them. Together.

And in the defence of that can all cultivate their own land secure in the knowledge of all-round benefits.

 
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