Fifty years ago | Uniform European passport: colour & symbol stand in the way

Brussels, July 21: The majority reportedly likes a delicate shade of lilac, but the British are a little miffed over that. The French and Germans don’t like the symbols. The others have proposed to go on the cover. And there is the matter of language. Such touchy issues as the colour of the passport, what to stamp on top and the tongues in which to print it keep intervening in the long-time quest for European unity.

Foreign Ministers of the nine Common Market countries have been struggling this week with the problems related to what is called a ‘uniform’ passport. The passport would be issued by each country individually, but would look the same for everybody.

Government heads of nine countries, which have a total of 260 million people, agreed at a summit last week to create the first popularly elected European Parliament. There is a European Parliament now but its 98 members are appointed and have little power.

As another part of the effort to convince West Europeans of progress towards unity, 106 young women have been hired to stand at border crossings and hand out leaflets extolling the accomplishments of the Common Market since its founding in 1958.