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If Europe were once more united in the sharing of its common inheritance,

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there would be no limit to the happiness, the prosperity and glory its three or four hundred million people would enjoy.

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If Europe were once more united...

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Fifty years ago, when the common market was born, what people wanted most was peace and prosperity for Europe.

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Caring for the environment didn't feature in the founding treaty of Rome.

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Yet environmental problems were not far away.

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Europe's love affair with the car was moving into top gear. Industry was building up.

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By the 1970s, it was clear that minimum standards needed to be set for water and air pollution, as well as waste management.

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The port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands was already a major centre for the petrochemical industry.

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In the 1970s, the air quality situation was very bad.

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There was an enormous smog problem, just like London, which was very bad for people.

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We still have memories of schools being closed because it wasn't reasonable to send kids to school, to allow them outside.

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Acid rain was destroying Europe's forests and green campaigners were making their presence felt.

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Individual countries began to take action and the EEC stepped in with tough new air quality laws.

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These days, sulphur dioxide levels in Rotterdam are just 20% what they were in 1970.

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Now industrial plants all over Europe must declare what pollutants they release into the air on an online EU emissions register.

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But there are new pressures on the quality of Europe's air, from emissions of ultrafine particles which, when breathed in, lodge deep in the lungs.

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As a result, researchers reckon that our lives are all being shortened by nine months.

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Technology has been developed to filter out the particles in new diesel engines.

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But domestic heating systems emit large amounts of this fine dust, and that's the next big challenge ahead.

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Fifty years ago, Europe's polluted rivers also needed help.

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The Rhine crosses six countries, a source of water for 50 million people.

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After the Second World War, the river was little more than an open sewer, as local people well remember.

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Summer 1964 was the last time that I swam in the Rhine, and it smelled so bad and was so polluted that I felt nauseous and was sick.

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And I said then I wouldn't swim here anymore, and I haven't done so since then.

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But I would now rather like to swim across the Rhine again, but I don't dare to anymore because I'm a bit out of practice.

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In the 1970s, Germany and the other countries bordering the Rhine, with backing from the EEC, began to clean it up, installing treatment stations and working closely with industry.

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But in 1986, a fire triggered a catastrophic chemical spill in Switzerland, which wiped out all aquatic life in the Rhine downstream for 400 kilometers.

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This called for drastic action, and a more tightly coordinated cross-border approach achieved near miracles.

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Ten years later, salmon were back swimming in the river.

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This integrated approach in the Rhine served as a model for current EU water legislation.

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Now, instead of managing a river and its water quality according to national frontiers, the whole territory of a river is taken into account.

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And while Europe's rivers were being cleaned up, so were the seas we swim in.

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Since 1990, there have been huge improvements, and now nine out of ten bathing areas are considered to be clean and safe.

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As Europe's become richer, we've become a continent of consumers.