Dear friends!
First of all, I want to congratulate and thank to every one person who helped to organize the Congress of Europe 2008. Your contributions were a strong and positive signal to the whole of Europe.
Europe, like every other entity, has its ups and downs. This is an unavoidable process. In fact, as strange as it might sound, it is the only right way. Although some people don’t believe in the idea of Europe, not only in Ireland, but in all of the 27 member countries, many more across the whole continent have faith, vision and strong commitment to bring Europeans together. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, they say.
Coming from a country that experienced the transition from totalitarianism to democracy, I can say Europe here, in Slovenia, was not only a way or a choice, rather than it was a goal. No one in Slovenia could imagine 10 years ago we would be leading the European Union, not even that we could walk over the border to Italy, Austria or Hungary without showing a document or even stopping on the border, without even seeing where the border is.
Slovenia is soon handing over the presidency to France. Soon, we will start forgetting how it is to live outside EU and Euro-skeptics will start making their points. But we don’t know what we have until we lose it. We are not going to lose Europe, therefore, we will be more and more skeptical about certain things in Europe. However, Europe is not only the 27 countries, currently member states. There are many more countries that are in similar position Slovenia was 10 or five years ago.
We hear a lot about Europe every day here in Slovenia, perhaps not so much about our current presidency, however, we talk a lot about Europe here in general. Despite the fact that we are geographically situated in Central Europe, we share our history with countries from former Yugoslavia and the whole South-eastern Europe. We have many things in common. An idea came out recently to organize a congress in Slovenia regarding the integration of the South-eastern countries in the EU, sharing the ideas with civil society representatives, governments of the region and European institutions.
The more we talked about this idea with people from different countries and organizations, the more we knew it is the right way to go. As the European Movement, we have to find ways to make specific contributions to the society. Here in Slovenia, we can make a contribution by knowing the region of South-eastern Europe and creating the environment where people from the region can discuss and share the ideas and find specific ways towards EU and common European values.
Europe has a special character, perhaps much more unique than other continents. Sometimes that results in stubbornness. We have to accept that and offer even newer ways and newer solutions. In Slovenia, we will try to find them and I think it is the same with all the European Movements across the continent.I wish you all a lot of positive European spirit!

An KRUMBERGER
President of European Movement Slovenia