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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 center 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 smoke 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, sulfur 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 ultra-fine 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.

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As we all generate a kilogram of waste every day, rubbish which pollutes the environment and also uses up the world's resources, as experts in the sustainable use of resources know only too well.

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There is a huge stock of raw material in society.

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I think there's enough aluminium and steel which could be recycled to support 400 years of economic growth.

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It's already here, it's not in the mountains, it's not in the ground, and we can recycle that effectively and maintain our use of that.

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The EU has been pushing for better management of waste for more than 30 years.

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The aim is to bring Europe even closer to a recycling society and limit our dependence on basic raw materials.

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There's legislation to tackle the increasing mountain of old televisions and computers.

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Electronic scrap now must be stripped of any hazardous substances and recycled as much as possible.

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There are similar rules covering the dismantling of old cars and trucks, dealing with up to 9 million tons of metal and glass every year.

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Now there are limits on the amount of wrapping on consumer goods too, and recycled paper is used everywhere.

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Newspapers in the EU contain more than 80% recycled material.

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The EU strategy for the future focuses on generating less rubbish in the first place and recycling what can't be avoided.

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This French TV campaign is already pushing that message home.

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The focus is also on new ways of designing and manufacturing products.

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Already cars are designed with easy recycling in mind.

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Today, about half of the metals, glass and paper produced in the EU are made of recycled materials.

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Waste is increasingly becoming an economic resource in its own right.

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With growing consumerism, chemicals have become an essential part of our everyday lives.

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The European Union has some of the toughest chemical safety laws in the world.

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The EU has already introduced a ban on harmful chemical substances, such as asbestos, even having to strip it out of its own Brussels headquarters.

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Last year brought a groundbreaking law on the registration, evaluation, authorization and restriction of chemicals, REACH for short.

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Before REACH, it was up to the authorities to prove that a particular substance was dangerous.

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The new rules oblige companies to test the chemicals they produce for dangerous characteristics and show how these chemicals can be handled safely.

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All making for a much safer working environment and a healthier Europe.

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We could avoid 50,000 cases of professional respiratory illness and 40,000 cases of professional skin complaints, both linked to chemical substances.

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The researchers calculated that it could lead to a saving of 3.5 billion euros over 10 years.

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Despite all the work done at European level, the sheer scale and speed of our urban living has had a drastic effect on nature and biodiversity.

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These children are growing up in a world where more than 4 out of 10 birds and mammals in Europe are under threat of extinction, as well as thousands of plants.

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It's not just about the world looking pretty.

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Healthy ecosystems are the basis of all life, not just for food, but for purifying air and water, fertilizing soil, discovering new medicines.

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The EU began giving special protection to nature in the 1970s.

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Its Habitats Directive, for instance, helping to pull back creatures such as the Iberian lynx from the brink of extinction.

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Now more than 22,000 different protected sites make up the Natura 2000 network.

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Including the Hortabagi National Park in Hungary.

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In the 1950s, the area was flooded in a failed attempt to grow rice.

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The natural ecological balance was destroyed.

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An EU life program has filled in the canals.

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Plants not seen in decades are returning.

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The park is once again an important resting ground for migratory birds.

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And the local economy is boosted by tourism.

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Natura 2000 is all about creating places where nature and sustainable economic activity can exist side by side.

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The European Union has been a terrific force for recognizing the value of nature.

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Let's not forget that something like now 20% of the whole land area of Europe has a kind of protection for nature.

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The aim is to halt the loss of Europe's biodiversity by 2010.

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A challenge not made any easier by the one issue dominating the environmental scene, climate change.

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Since it moved on to the political agenda in the late 80s, Europe has been leading international efforts to fight global warming.

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The EU has gone further than other signatories to the Kyoto Protocol in agreeing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions not by 5%, but 8% from 1990 levels by 2012.

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In Washington in February, EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas addressed international legislators.

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He called on them to act together to agree a more stringent carbon cutting scheme for the future.

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What I stressed is that it is absolutely necessary in order to have an effective tackling of this global problem,

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the cooperation of the European Union and the United States is necessary.

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The EU wants developed countries collectively to agree to a binding plan for a 30% cut in emissions below 1990 levels by 2020.

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As a first step towards this, the European Union is committed to reducing its own emissions by at least 20% over this period, irrespective of what other countries decide.

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Stepping up its program to cut emissions, reducing CO2 from new cars, using more biofuels, setting energy performance standards for new buildings.

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The EU also wants to expand its groundbreaking emissions trading scheme to become a global carbon trading network.

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Launched in 2005, the innovative scheme allocates emission allowances to companies.

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They have an incentive to reduce their carbon output because they can then sell any allowances they don't need.

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For Commission President José Manuel Barroso, it's time for a revolution to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

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Europe must lead the world into a new, or maybe one should say, post-industrial revolution.

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The development of a low-carbon economy.

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We have already left behind our coal-based industrial past.

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It is time to embrace our low-carbon future.

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The environmental challenges faced by these children 50 years ago and those faced by children today are very different ones.

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The European Union has been a major force for protecting the world we live in.

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It's not going to stop now.