Kohl's Dream of United Europe Remains Incomplete

PARIS (Reuters) - Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Helmut Kohl's dream of a united Germany leading to a politically united Europe remains unfinished business.

It is set to stay that way despite the expected entry into force of the European Union's Lisbon Treaty in the near future.

German unification triggered possibly the last great leap forward in European integration, with the landmark agreement in Maastricht in 1991 to establish an economic and monetary union with a single currency and a common foreign and security policy.

Resistance by Eurosceptical Britain and reluctance by France to share more sovereignty prevented the EU moving any further toward Kohl's dream of a full political union akin to Germany's own federal system of governance.

After Maastricht, the widening of Europe to embrace new members from the former Soviet bloc took precedence over deeper integration. The bloc has grown from 12 to 27 nations spanning most of the continent.

As communist rule crumbled around Eastern Europe in 1989, Kohl, then chancellor of West Germany, sought to ease his neighbors' acute anxieties over the scramble for reunification by embedding it in a wider process of European unity.

In a landmark speech to parliament in Bonn on November 28, 1989, setting out a 10-point plan for German unity, Kohl declared: "Opportunities are opening to overcome the division of Europe and hence also of our Fatherland."

Kohl wanted to bind the new Germany into a united Europe and NATO to prevent any resurgence of nationalism. He argued that an economic and monetary union would be unbalanced and a patchwork unless Europe achieved a political union at the same time.

Kohl was the last German leader to proclaim the ideal of a United States of Europe -- a vision now confined to a handful of federalists like former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt. His successors, Gerhard Schroeder and Angela Merkel, have been less enthusiastic about the EU, and more willing than Kohl to stand up for German national interests.