Fact of life: Europe is living through some very, very dark times. Many are predicting that the euro, the currency that the Union adopted almost 12 years ago, is going to die very soon, a casualty of the economic crisis in Greece; the former British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, is in fact one of them, which suggests that the prediction is more than the usual round of doomy-gloomy one receives from the conventional Eurosceptics; in fact, many observers predict that this will be the true litmus test of the Union and some of them have been heard doubting that this political project will continue to exist.

The thought is, to our ears, quite sobering; the foundations of the Union were laid in 1957, which is to say that it has been a fact of life for Europeans aged under 50. Many of us have never known our continent without some effort of political congruence; those of us who have lived longer than that remember perfectly well the imperatives that led to its creation.

Which begs the question: Why all this vitriol? Why the doubts, why the uncertainty? Why the risk of dissolution?

The European Union in its inception was a single act of will, and unprecedented commitment the likes of which had never before been seen. The fact that free countries, who had shared a long history of squabbles, trade, and war, should decide to converge towards each other so that their peoples are never again threatened by political upheavel is… history. The history of the continent, and the history of the world, because the world was not left out of this movement: the United Nations too were founded “to free humanity from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime…” (etc).

In the present, the European act of Will has proven more successful than most would acknowledge: while the Union has not known a perfect political convergence, most Europeans would now view it as completely unthinkable for one EU member state to war against another. Too much unites us now... on the other hand, the sheer fact that the compelling reasons to promote the EU are gone, the EU itself seems less of an imperative, which is why support for it is flagging even in countries that would have hated to be out of it a couple of years ago.

There is at least one communication issue at work here, and we, eco-c.eu, are well apt to address the issue for this reason:

Should we transpose the situation to that of a firm, the only situation where such a thing happened was the Société Générale investment issue, which resolved itself in court. In any firm where the employees had ECo-C training, the tenets of communication, teamwork and conflict management mean that so much secretive action would ring alarm bells early on, ensuring that it never got this far. The issue would not arise, nor would there be a question of helping, not helping, accepting help, or dissolving the firm because of it.

While we can hope that the EU member states can learn from their mistakes and pursue strengthened communication in a team framework that is open, respectful and receptive to differences, we wish them luck in pulling the European project out of the tight spot it finds itself now.