This weekend the biggest party in Europe will be in Berlin, where Germany, as holder of the revolving EU presidency, hosts a lavish celebration of 50 years of peace. But how much do its original ideals matter today?

Heads of state and government gather this weekend in Berlin to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the founding treaty of the European Community, now the European Union.

There can be no meeting without words and, with the original Europe of Six now being a Europe of 27, what the words should be have been hard fought over. What, for example, to say about the future of the EU's ill-starred Constitutional Treaty?

The Poles have finally agreed to admit that something must be done to pick up the pieces. The eventual outcome will not look, walk or talk like a constitution and, to the relief of most, will probably take the form of unpretentious amendments to the existing EU treaties to make the enlarged organisation work better.

The British are reported (and this brings back, not necessarily fond, memories of the Whitehall I knew and loved) to have been resisting saying anything positive about the euro. After all, if we are not in it, it cannot be worth talking about, can it? And, in truth, the euro has not been the stunning success its members had hoped, and the British feared, it would be. But interest rates, inflation and deficits are all at historic lows compared with the pre-euro era and that would not have happened without it. So, we British can afford to give the euro-zone a pat on the back even while sitting on our hands about our own possible membership.

Also meeting this weekend, but in Rome, is a conference of Catholics from all over the European Union organised by the European Catholic bishops' organisation, la Commission des Episcopats de la Communauté européenne, better known as COMECE. The conference is to debate and proclaim its own fiftieth-anniversary statement on Europe's values and perspectives: the ethical dimension of what the EU is all about. The statement was drawn up by Catholic lay women and men (myself included) from across the Union, former members of the European Commission and a former chairman of the International Monetary Fund among them. It is blessed by the bishops of COMECE but it is a statement from the nave of the Church, not the bishop's chair.

What we are trying to say is this. Fifty years ago a small group of visionary men, the oft-mentioned "founding fathers" (for unfortunately there were, as my sisters are constantly berating me, no "founding mothers") changed the course of history. Their vision of how to make a lasting peace was rooted in their Christian beliefs and in Europe's Christian traditions. They deliberately created an organisation with Christian values but in a secular structure.

Since coal and steel were the ingredients of the instruments of war, they decided that the previously warring nations would hold and manage them in common. That Coal and Steel Community led, in 1957, to the Treaty of Rome and on to the European Community. At its heart was the goal of "ever closer union among the peoples of Europe", a high-minded vision rooted in down-to-earth shared policies: a common market in which goods and services could be freely exchanged with no customs or other barriers; a common agricultural policy because the fear of starvation had loomed large across the landscape of war-torn Germany (and, it has to be said, because the French did a brilliant deal for their peasant farmers); and a notion, ill-defined, of political union at the end.

At the heart of the project were two ideas: that peace would have a better chance if the economies of the quarrelling nations of Europe were inextricably entwined; and that the big countries could not throw their weight around if there were some supranational institutions (a commission, a parliament and a court) to be the guardians of the rules and of the sovereignty that the member states had agreed to share. It worked brilliantly. It did so well that a reluctant Britain, still basking in the afterglow of empire in 1957, found itself trailing economically behind the original Six some 10 years later. It joined in 1973.

The new Europe did not put an end to nationalistic disputes between the member countries. But it created a mechanism for managing and solving them. It became a pole of attraction for countries breaking free of the straitjacket of tyranny: first Greece, Portugal and Spain and later 10 great European countries that had been trodden under the Soviet heel for half a century.

By the time of the Maastricht Treaty, which created the eurozone in 1992, we could truthfully say that we had never had it so good. Many in Europe hoped, as many in Britain feared, that a genuine European political federation would result from economic and monetary union. It did not happen. A reunited Germany had less interest in political union at European level. The demise of the Soviet Union dissolved some of the political glue that had held the project together. The original Six resented the new members.

Globalisation and migration caught the EU unawares. Like the world viewed for the first time from outer space, we became aware that we were not big, self-sufficient and able to set the terms of conduct for others. But, instead of coming closer together, we began to drift apart. The Constitutional Treaty, pulling together all we had in common, was given short shrift by two of the founder members.

In part this was because the EU had lost sight of its commitment to subsidiarity - the principle of respect for lower levels of decision-taking that derives directly from the social teaching of the Catholic Church. It also reflected alienation from a Brussels machine, often described as corrupt although, in truth, most of the abuses come from the poor management by member governments of the EU's programmes.

Although this is an organisation in which sovereignty is shared to an unprecedented degree, it can flourish only so long as the individual member countries are prepared to share a common vision and dedicate themselves, in each generation, to make it work. This fiftieth-anniversary celebration is, for a secular organisation, the equivalent of renewing its baptismal vows.

In Rome, we are to ask Romano Prodi, the Italian Prime Minister, to take our message to the other EU leaders in Berlin. We want to remind them of Europe's Christian roots and enduring Christian values - although these are values we share with other faiths. For this Europe cannot be a club that forever excludes a democratic Turkey. We shall remind them that, for all its failings, Europe has stood for peace, for peacekeeping, for help for the poor of the world. We shall commend them for taking a lead in the world on the problems of climate change and energy, and remind them that we cannot allow petty national rivalries to reassert themselves if we are to deal humanely with the issues of migration, job creation and diverse social groups that must learn to live as a community.

The European Union will probably never be the political union its founders imagined. But it is a community of ideas, ideals, values and law. We need those qualities as much for the next 50 years as for the last.

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