European leaders yesterday celebrated the EU's 50th birthday, with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, telling the prime ministers or presidents of 27 countries that modern Europe was a dream come true.
But the birthday party summit for the EU - staged with rock concerts, Beethoven, beer and cake in brilliant sunshine in Berlin - was soured by the German Pope, Benedict XVI, who delivered a profoundly pessimistic verdict on Europe at 50, declaring that the continent could be heading for extinction.
Angry that a "Berlin Declaration" unveiled yesterday listing the EU's achievements and challenges on its 50th birthday contained no reference to the continent's Christian roots, Pope Benedict said that Europe could "not be built by ignoring its people's identities".
In his remarks to bishops gathered for ceremonies in Rome to mark the signing of the treaty that founded the EU in 1957, the Pope declared that the reluctance of women in Europe to have babies and Europe's failure to regenerate itself was putting the continent on the path to oblivion. "From a demographic standpoint ... Europe seems set on a path that could lead it to take leave of history," he warned. Europe was "losing faith in its own future".
Birthrates are at historic lows in many EU countries, most notably in strongly Roman Catholic countries such as Poland, Italy and Spain. According to UN projections, the population of the EU could shrink by 50m within a few decades.
The stark comments from the pontiff appeared timed to spoil the Euro-party mood. They contrasted graphically with the festive atmosphere in Berlin, while Mrs Merkel used the EU summit as a springboard for her central aim of reviving the European constitution.
"The European Union needs more and clearer powers than it has," Mrs Merkel said, before disclosing how she hopes to use the remaining three months of her EU presidency to drive her constitution project forward. Over the next couple of months said German officials, Mrs Merkel will canvass views on which parts of the European constitution can be salvaged.
The birthday card document agreed by all EU states yesterday stated that the EU needs to be placed on a new footing within two years, which Mrs Merkel says gives her a mandate to push the constitution.
British officials say the government's key priority is to avoid a referendum on a new constitution, a vote it thinks it would lose. They add that Britain is happy to go along with many of the changes sought by the Germans, but that their scale must be kept "below the referendum threshold". "The sooner this is resolved, the better," said Tony Blair yesterday, reflecting a growing EU consensus that the dispute should be settled quickly.
Britain apart, Poland, the Czech Republic and The Netherlands have serious objections to the constitutional project. But Hans-Gert Poettering, the German president of the European parliament, said the new charter need not be called a "constitution", as long as the bulk of the original draft was retained.
Speaking yesterday in the courtyard of Germany's History Museum in central Berlin, a few hundred yards from the line of the old Berlin Wall, Mrs Merkel recalled that growing up behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany, she never imagined she would see the west before her old age.
She also addressed Pope Benedict's objections, stating that as a Christian Democrat she believed that Europe's culture was rooted in "Christian-Jewish" traditions. But the Pope's criticism of contemporary Europe appeared deliberately timed to cloud the 50th birthday bash.
He said that Europe's moral, cultural, and historical values had been forged by Christianity and that the EU was denying such facts. Europe's loss of contact with its Christian roots was bringing about "a singular form of apostasy, not so much from God as from itself".