If the European Union of the future, whose constitution is now being forged by the convention in Brussels, is to work well as a democratic system of governance, it is important that it reflect common values shared by Europeans - values which in some measure differentiate us from the rest of the world. Without some such distinctive common cultural basis, it is hard to see the European Union developing the kind of deep roots required to enable it to acquire full democratic legitimacy, writes Garret FitzGerald.
I believe, however, that the basis for such shared values has already been created by a multiple revolution in political ideas which has occurred in Europe during the past half-century in a way that has not happened in other parts of the industrialised world. The trouble with this kind of revolution in ideas is that, in contrast to political revolutions, it often takes place so gradually that we fail to observe that it has happened until long afterwards. We need therefore to raise public consciousness of what has been achieved in relation to the development of European values.
As I see it, there are four key elements to this European intellectual revolution: they relate to human rights; peace; relations with developing countries; and global ecology.
The first of these intellectual revolutions was the effective abandonment of national sovereignty in the area of human rights, achieved through the signature in 1950 and subsequent ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights. This was a remarkable reversal of the insistence on unbridled national sovereignty which had marked the evolution of international affairs during the preceding centuries.
Next, the emerging European Community created an ever-enlarging zone of peace as well as prosperity - a zone within which the possibility of asserting national sovereignty in arms was abandoned in favour of a developing supra-national structure within which the rule of law is applied by a court in Luxembourg.
When the Iron Curtain disappeared in 1989, it soon became clear that this zone of peace was not going to extend to the western Balkans. But it was immediately adhered to by the countries of central and north-eastern Europe. Thus, for example, newly-liberated Hungary and Romania quickly agreed not to revive their ancient quarrel about Transylvania, and Poland immediately established good relations with the Ukraine and Lithuania, ending disputes which had caused great bitterness throughout the 20th century.
Despite continued NATO involvement on the part of most EU member-states, and enthusiasm among central and eastern European states for that organisation, there has in Western Europe been a greater interest in the emerging Rapid Reaction Force, engaging if and when necessary in the very limited Petersberg Tasks of maintaining peace and protecting human rights.
There has also been an associated growth of European support for the rule of law at international level and for the role of the United Nations as the ultimate arbiter of breaches of the code. No European state is now prepared to commit an overt breach of international law - as the United States did when it mined Nicaraguan ports in the 1980s.
Revulsion against violence and a new type of commitment to human life also led the states which created, or later acceded to, the European Union, Ireland included, to abandon capital punishment at various points between the 1950s and 1970s, which has now become a crucial feature of Europe's human rights commitment.
Next, during the immediate post-war decade, Europe's colonial powers abandoned their empires, conceding independence to their colonies. But not alone was colonialism universally abandoned by European states during the 30 years after the second World War - the earlier practice of seeking to draw wealth from these countries in order to bolster the economies of colonial powers was also radically reversed through the introduction of development aid to former colonies.
It is, of course, true that this conversion is incomplete. Economic factors have in some cases limited the practical effects of the reversal of former colonial attitudes. Protection of domestic economic interests, whether industrial or, in the Irish case, agricultural, continues to have an exploitative impact upon the developing world.
And many, although not all, European countries also continue to act at least partly in a neo-colonial manner by tying part of their development aid to the purchase by recipients of their goods and services. Nevertheless, the broad thrust of European public attitudes towards poorer countries overseas is today benevolent rather than exploitative, and government policies of the European states are directed increasingly towards minimising negative aspects of relations with the developing world.
Europe also provides a quite disproportionate share of aid, and particularly untied aid. Here again there is a marked contrast with the United States. By comparison with Europe's effort, that country's scale of civil, as distinct from military, aid to countries other that Israel is minimal.
Finally, it is in Europe that there has developed in recent decades a sense of the need to address global ecological problems which could threaten the future of the planet. Inadequate though the steps so far taken in this matter may be, it cannot be denied that the principal impetus to tackle this problem has come from Europe which, with limited success so far, and faced with strong opposition from the United States, has been endeavouring to mobilise global support for ecological measures to halt the warming of the planet.
The emergence in Europe of these four new public values has represented a dramatic response to our continent's traumatic experiences in the first half of the 20th century. The United States had a quite different experience of the 20th century - one which did not similarly challenge the value system that had been emerging there since the 18th century - and thus during the past half-century European and American value systems have diverged significantly in some important respects.
We need to develop in Europe much greater public consciousness of the overall cultural - and eventually political - implications of the emergence of a distinctive European value system.
It cannot be merely a coincidence that in the half-century since Europe was shattered by the physical and moral destruction of the second World War, from which the territory of the United States was spared, it is culturally-divided Europe rather than the culturally-uniform United States which succeeded in turning on its head so much of its historic political and geo-political heritage - thereby demonstrating an intellectual vitality which no one could or did foresee in 1945.
It will not be easy to build on this emerging European value system and culture a sense of a common political interest which will be sufficiently robust to provide a democratic basis for the political superstructure we have erected to handle our common European problems and interests. But, without such a common value system and culture, this task will be much more difficult.