Michael McGowan: Europe must learn from its past, not just celebrate it

What the MEPs have had up their sleeves during their holiday break are not plans for the future of Europe but preparations for a day of celebration in order to pay tribute to both a politician and a trade union for the part they have played.

The European Union has a rich track record of naming buildings, streets and city squares in honour of past achievements and generally patting itself on the back, but this is meaningless nonsense unless it faces up to the present crisis in Europe.

Members of the European Parliament have decided to begin their back to business agenda by dedicating the promenade at the Brussels headquarters of the European Parliament to its former President Simone Veil and to the non-communist trade union Solidarnosc.

French politician Veil became the President of the first directly elected European Parliament in 1979 and the Polish trade union Solidarnosc played a leading role in the collapse of communism in Europe. Guests invited to attend the special ceremony in Brussels are MEPs and the great and the good from across Europe. The celebration includes the inauguration of the “Simone Veil Agora” and the “Solidarnosc 1980 Esplanade” by the President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek.

Both Simone Veil and Lech Walesa, the former President of Poland and leader of the famous Gdansk shipyards and the Solidarnosc movement, have agreed to be present.

Before the event, President Buzek said he was “honoured to dedicate the European Parliament esplanade in Brussels to both the Solidarnosc trade union, which helped to overthrow communism and re-unite our continent, and to Simone Veil, a former President of the Parliament and survivor from the Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp”.

Poland is certainly making its mark on the EU at the moment with Jerzy Buzek, the able and high-profile Polish MEP, as President of the European Parliament and at the same time Poland having the six-month rotating EU presidency. It is hard to avoid noticing the Polish presence in today’s European political scene.

Of the European politicians I have met, it would be difficult to find two individuals who were more contrasting in style than Lech Walesa and Simone Veil.

As a member of the European Parliament’s delegation to Poland prior to EU membership, I met Walesa in Warsaw on one occasion only, when his passion and impressive rabble-rousing skills seemed like a cross between Boris Yeltsin of Russia and George Brown from this country.

Simone Veil was a colleague of mine in the European Parliament where she was dignified, always impeccably dressed, usually calm, and occasionally feisty.

She was born in France on July 13, 1927, the daughter of a Jewish architect in Nice. She trained as a lawyer, served as Minister of Health under President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, and was the first President of the directly elected European Parliament from 1979 to 1982.

Her family was deported, Simone, her mother, and one sister to Auschwitz-Birkenau where her mother died shortly before the liberation of the camp on April 15, 1945. Her father and brother also died.

The creation of what we today call the European Union was inspired by the life of Simone Veil and other victims of Nazism and must never be forgotten.

It is part of the history of how the European Union came into being as a resource for peace and reconciliation and reminds us of the courage and vision of the founders of the EU who were determined that the history of concentration camps and mass cemeteries should never be repeated.

The European Parliament is right to mark the proud history of the EU and honour the courage and vision of its founders.

While reminding the world of the proud history of the European Union, it is now the time for the present EU leaders to demonstrate the same courage and vision of its founders by tackling the urgent economic crisis in Europe and making sure that Europe is at the forefront of progress for peace and prosperity in the world.

New street names are no substitute for addressing the unemployment, poverty and social exclusion that is the experience of far too many citizens in today’s Europe.

Michael McGowan is a former Labour MEP for Leeds and President of the Development Committee of the European Parliament.