THE Italian Prime Minister set the European Summit ball rolling with a strongly pro Europe address. Mr Romano Prodi was presiding, in Florence last night, over his first major international conference since his election vict9iy in April.
Speaking at the European University of Florence, Mr Prodi argued that the time had come for "the European Union to redress the huge imbalance between its economic status as a heavyweight and its lightweight political role.
The meeting was presided over by the university's Irish president, Prof Paddy Masterson.
Public opinion across Europe was enraged at the apparent inability of the EU to play a more meaningfal role in the ethnic warfare of the last four years in former Yugoslavia, Prof Prodi admitted.
The only way for the EU to develop a meaningful voice on the international stage, he suggested, was for it to pursue with ever more vigour the whole policy of European political integration as defined, above all, by the Maastricht Treaty.
Political integration is viewed with distrust by European populations experiencing 11% unemlployment, he acknowledged. He called on the EU partners to adopt an all encompassing strategic vision that would sell the European unity argument.
Political rather than just economic integration could prove crucial to the cause of prosperity, security and democracy throughout the EU and, in future, throughout an ex communist eastern Europe currently struggling with difficulties such as, refound nationalisms, frontier disputes and minority rights.
In a post Cold War world, said Mr Prodi, the time had come for the EU to assume ever greater security responsibilities, which would both offer an anchorage for the emerging eastern European countries and reduce the US role in European security.
A new pan European system of security guarantees could play a complementary role to that of an enlarged Nato, while at the same time offering Russia good reasons for future co operation and integration with the West.
On the economic front, the Union had only one way forward that of greater economic integration as symbolised by the single currency to compete in an increasingly globalised marketplace where "it has become very difficult to hide yourself".
Despite Italy's current difficulties with meeting the celebrated Maastricht criteria, he promised that Italy would in no way hinder the birth of the single European currency.
Pointing to Italy's strategic Mediterranean role as a meeting point between North and South, East and West and Arab and Christian cultures, Prof Prodi took the opportunity to claim a central voice for Italy in all aspects of the current critical debate on the ongoing process of analysis and future reform of EU institutions, currently being tackbled above all by the Inter Governmental Conference.
Answering questions later about the possible future re entry of the lira into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, Mr Prodi said that such re entry would be effected only after lengthy negotiations with the EU partners.
It would not be attempted as a temporary measure with a clause providing for an opt out in the immediate future.