Flying the flag for Schuman (one N) of the ‘Kohl and Steal Community’

Date: 16/05/1996

I MARKED Europe Day last week by standing on Rond-Point Schuman and pondering its namesake's role in the Europe we have created.

Rond-Point is of course not a blood relative of Robert Schuman, there being no proven link between Uniform Vehicle Rotation Coagulation (UVRC) in roundabouts and Round and Round in Ever-decreasing Circles Syndrome (RECS), a similar disease in people.

And yet the connection between this humble intersection and the European crossroads at which we all stand cannot be ignored.

For those not familiar with Rond-Point Schuman, let me explain that this key junction stands just a cough and spit from the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. If Brussels is the heart of Europe, Rond-Point Schuman is its main artery and when it gets clogged, Europe skips a beat.

What Rond-Point Schuman and the European Union have in common is the fact that every day thousands and thousands of people go round and round them both, with no one prepared to give way to anyone else.

And, to take the analogy with the EU just a small step further whilst injecting a tiny note of optimism, we all know that however choked up and clogged with traffic and mindless me-first bully-boy drivers Rond-Point Schuman becomes, things would come to a grinding halt if it did not exist at all.

The question is: where would we all be now without the vision of Rond-Point's namesake?

Robert Schuman was indeed the architect of Europe, and one can only wonder what he would have made of the European architecture I can see from here and for which he is plainly responsible.

He has left behind monuments which were not even erected by the time he died in 1963. Across the way stands the bizarre legacy of the asbestos-riddled Berlaymont, too unsafe to occupy and now even too unsafe for workmen to make safe again. It resides, proud and majestic beneath its white shroud - or does it? Perhaps, like the invisible man, when the bandages come off there will be nothing there at all.

And across the other side of Rue de la Loi, well what can one say? The pink marble wonderland that is the Council of Ministers stands like something which fell off a wedding cake. Its saving grace is that, from here at least, the building's angular magnitude conceals the view of the giant glass European Parliament monstrosity known as the Espace Leopold where, even on Europe Day, workman are busy building Europe on the outside while MEPs are busy knocking it down on the inside.

It is a little-known fact that Robert Schumann spent much of his life in fear of losing his mind, and finally went potty and died in an asylum.

Little wonder, you may think, when you ponder the vagaries of the European Union he spawned, but in fact we are now talking about Robert Schumann, composer, with two Ns, who seems to merit far more biographical space than his alphabetically-challenged phonetical twin.

Schumann was of the 19th century German romantic school. He left behind much chamber music, four symphonies, and a piano concerto.

Schuman was of the French romantic school which believed in long-term peace and prosperity after the horrors of two world wars. He left behind only one work, the European Union, and it includes movements redolent of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

But there might well have been even more tears by now without him. It was on 9 May in 1950 that Robert Schuman - with one N - made an historic call for reconciliation, an appeal which resulted, in April 1951, in the creation of the presciently-named European Coal and Steel Community of six founding member states.

The name has been adapted to changing times, of course, and now we are all part of the European Kohl and Steal Community, a 15-member club run by the Germans and dogged by rampant Euro-fraud.

But let that not overshadow the ambition nor lessen the huge achievement of Robert One-N, who lived long enough to witness the big “Non” event, when his own country, the nation of which he was foreign minister when he made his dramatic appeal for stability and unity, blocked the UK's first application to join the club.

Could General de Gaulle's obduracy all those years ago have set the tone for today's disenchantment? Perhaps French xenophobia, and not British, is actually to blame for the fact that today we mark Europe Day in a mood of IGC and BSE-induced melancholy over the future.

Nothing much really happened on 9 May 1950 and you won't find it listed as a landmark in many history books. Odder is the fact that the signing on 18 April 1951 of the founding Treaty of Paris, which set up the European Coal and Steel Community, is not recorded as a significant date in my encyclopaedia.

And while Schumann the composer of music is accorded seven lines under the heading “Prominent People”, Robert Schuman the founder of Europe is nothing under any heading.

Waving a few flags from public buildings on 9 May this year has done little to promote the Frenchman either. Even here, on Rond-Point Schuman, the name means nothing.

“Yeah” says one passing punter. “German racing driver with a big square jaw. Keeps beating Damon Hill.”

“Schuman?” ponders another. “Just a minute, ummm, did he design this roundabout?”

After a few blank looks from other vox-popped victims, a knowledgeable type does appear: “Schumann? Yes, absolutely. One of the most revered people of his day.”

What do you think was his biggest achievement?

“Well, that's easy. I think his Piano Concerto in A minor was undoubtedly his best orchestral work and...” Thank you so much. Next please.

Never mind Robert Schuman, born with only one N and destined to die with no more letters added to your name, you are in good unheralded company. How many people know, for instance, that 9 May was the date in 1502 on which Christopher Columbus set sail on his fourth voyage of discovery? The date, in fact, on which a beam of light was successfully bounced off the moon by US scientists using a laser in 1962? And the date, crucially, on which Bix Beiderbecke recorded “River Boat Shuffle” in 1927?

Let there be flag-flying and merry-making on all counts.