The President, Mrs McAleese, last night called on the EU to honour the aspirations of its founding fathers as it entered the new millennium by working together to build a larger, more cohesive Europe which cherished and protected fundamental human rights.
The President made her call for a "new global ethical base" in her Jean Monnet lecture, delivered last night at the University Institute in Florence. This prestigious annual lecture is usually on EU issues.
Identifying some of the challenges facing the EU as it entered the next millennium, the President made a strong appeal for enlargement. She urged the EU to acknowledge that its most "immediate responsibility is towards those of our neighbours on the European continent who have applied to join the European Union".
Arguing that the EU was not an exclusive club, Mrs McAleese said if the policy on exclusivity had applied in the early 1970s, Ireland would "possibly still be waiting at the door" for membership. "The door is open and must remain open to our democratic European neighbours as and when they are ready to join." While acknowledging that the EU had created a value system which "sometimes falls short", she was keen to stress the positive achievements and potential of the EU ideal, both to Ireland and to the world.
Although many had feared that Ireland had "sold its soul for economic gain" when entering the then Common Market in 1973, the President said EU membership had had a profoundly positive impact on the State.
"Never before have we been so culturally confident, never before have we taken such pride in our distinctive traditions and heritage."
Even those involved in the Northern Ireland peace process had much to learn from the European experience. "The atrocities of two world wars may have been the stimulus that provoked the creation of the European Union.
"That stimulus, the memory of those horrors, was enough to sustain the architects of today's peaceful Europe through the long, slow, painful process of building that peace. "It took years to build up the democratic framework through which partnership could take root in Europe. Even longer to eradicate the bitterness in the hearts of people."
Mrs McAleese ended her address by arguing that the achievements made by the EU - its treaties, its institutions, its realisation of shared interests, as evidenced by the single currency, and its way of doing business - gave us the "tools and ethical framework to be the generation that tackles poverty for real, within our boundaries and outside them".
Mrs McAleese is on a five-day visit to Italy which takes her to Rome today. She will have a Friday audience in the Vatican with Pope John Paul II and a Saturday meeting, also in Rome, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey.