‘Although its style and its methods are deliberately modest, our Convention is a major “first”. It represents the first constituent assembly on a European scale. It has to establish a solid and lasting constitutional framework for 450 million Europeans, in what will soon be 25 Member States […] Woe betide Europe if it remains divided! Woe betide its growth, the flowering of its culture, the drive behind its science and technology, its image and its influence in the world. […] Because Europe is more than just a cooperative of member states, because people in or countries feel European too, and because sometimes our histories are inextricably intertwined.’