to its timeliness , taking place less than two weeks after the fall of the Wall , and particularly owing to the nature of its participants : leaders and parliamentarians who had mostly lived through , participated in or suffered from the Second World War . Most Germans , members of the largest population in the centre of the continent , without any defined borders but with a strong cultural and historical identity , cherished the hope of reunification . For many others , the prospect of a unified and powerful Germany , which could once again adopt its Sonderweg or special path , was seen as a threat . However , both the atmosphere and the result showed that the Community spirit had become deep-rooted among Western Europeans and also that it constituted a legitimate aspiration for those excluded from power by the construction of such an indestructible wall as an iron curtain , as I had the honour of saying directly on behalf of the European Parliament before the democratically elected parliaments of Poland , Hungary and Czechoslovakia .
The words and silences of Mitterrand and Kohl during their joint appearance before the European Parliament were particularly important : they were able to channel positively and overcome their differences , despite the long history of confrontation , including on a personal level . That is one of the virtues of the Community method , or rather its spirit , which had also made it possible for Pierre Uri , a French philosophy professor who was persecuted by the Vichy Regime , to draft the Treaty of Rome from beginning to end , under the supervision and control of Hans von der Groeben , a senior German civil servant .
As a result of that historic debate , an elected European Parliament with a majority of members who had fought or suffered in the European civil war that had become the World War , supported German reunification as part of the construction of a stronger and peaceful Europe open to enlargement .
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