European Dream: Promises and Reality [antikvár]

GIULIETTO CHIESA I have the honour to open this seminar promoted with the personal involvement of Prime Minister Gyula Horn and President Mikhail Gorbachev's inspiration and devoted to the 50''' anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, whose importance is closely intertwined with the breadth of the impending problems concerning Europe and mankind as a whole. We are all here at a turning point and will have to face dramatic changes in our lifetime. It is already clear that the end of the cold war did not produce a new way of thinking in international relations. Many challenges that previously were almost invisible became now dramatically evident and have found no solution. It is clear that in the coming years we will face huge difficulties affecting the way of life for billions of people in Europe and elsewhere. I am referring to the environmental crises whose clear sign is climate change, the impending energy crisis and the deepening of the financial crisis which is provoking uncontrolled monetary imbalances and has taken the oil price beyond $100 per barrel in recent days. It will not help to close our eyes to a rapidly developing arms race and the risks of new conflicts and even wars that are already visible. We need therefore a qualitatively new effort, a multilateral one, to cope with the new dangers and to invert present trends. The international institutions leading the world economy and policy in the last 50 years prove powerless to face these trends and challenges, therefore we need a new international architecture.