United for the Better: My European Way

Table of Contents

545 pages including 32 pages of colour plates.

Introduction

Part I: My impressionable years

1. Lessons of youth
2. Personal and political values and benchmarks

Part II: Putting Parliament to the test: rising to the challenges of German unity and European unification

1. Down to business in the European Parliament in 1979
2. New duties after the 1984 European election
3. Achieving German unity and overcoming the schism of Europe
4. The Maastricht Treaty
5. The 1994 European elections: an ambitious goal
6. On the way to the Amsterdam Treaty
7. The enlargement of the European Union

Part III: Leading the EPP Group and mapping out its European policy

1. The EPP on the way to becoming the strongest group in the European Parliament
2. The causa Austria
3. Services Directive and the consequences of different mentalities
4. The Treaty of Nice and the Constitutional Treaty
5. Explosive events and pleasing aspects of life in Parliament
6. Trials of strength

Part IV: President of the European Parliament, caught up in the quest for a European Constitution

1. Leadership and daily duties of the president of the European Parliament
2. “United for the better”: the Berlin Declaration
3. The struggle to ratify the Lisbon Treaty
4. Internal affairs of the European Parliament

Part V: Standing up for human dignity

1. Justice and solidarity: the mission of uniting Europe
2. The economic and financial crisis and solidarity in Europe
3. Europe as a partner for peace in the world
4. Intercultural dialogue: partnership and tolerance
5. Human rights are indivisible
6. Identity and historical awareness
7. Meetings in the Vatican
8. Visitors and visits

Part VI: Everything has its time

1. A thanksgiving service in Osnabrück on the theme of German- Polish friendship

Endnotes

Index of persons