UNITED EUROPE MOVEMENT

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25737, 24 February 1949, Page 5

UNITED EUROPE MOVEMENT

CONGRESS TO OPEN AT BRUSSELS

16 COUNTRIES MAY BE REPRESENTED

BRUSSELS, February 22. A new effort to build up a United States of Europe will be made from February 25 to February 28 by 150 delegates from about 16 European countries meeting in Brussels, says the Associated Press.

These delegates will represent their countries at the first meeting of the International Council of the Movement for a United Europe. * The council’s agenda‘includes:— (1) The study of a recommendation to create a European International Court, the aim of which is to enforce the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. (2) The drafting and approval of a programme of European policy. (3) Discussion of the general organisation of the Movement for a United Europe.

The representatives are leading personalities in their countries. They include Mr Churchill. They have been chosen from national groups and they seek to unite European countries into one large co-operative economic and political group. Mr Jean Drapier, the Belgian Prime Minister’s chief of the Cabinet, who will be chairman of the Brussels conference, said that the idea of the movement was born at the United Europe Congress at The Hague in May, 1948. It was there that all national movements decided to co-ordinate their efforts towards unity. They- had already achieved one of the decisions of The Hague conference—the creation of the European Assembly. Mr Drapier said that the movement had no effective power to enforce its recommendations. “It is working to unify Europe through pressure exerted on those in power by public opinion,” he said. “Diplomacy must be stimulated by public opinion to quicken its action towards unity.”