The Community of Europe

A History of European Integration Since 1945

Derek W. Urwin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317892519
• Edition: 2
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This hugely successful history of political and economic integration in Western Europe since the Second World War -- and especially, but by no means exclusively, the European Community itself -- was first published in 1991, to general acclaim. Since then much turbulent water has flowed under the bridges of Maastricht and Strasbourg. Now, in this welcome Second Edition, Derek Urwin has brought the story fully up to date, with an account of developments since 1991 and an assessment of the mood and prospects of Europe and the Community today.

CHAPTER ONE

The Persisting Idea of Europe

The story of European integration, as it is understood today, essentially begins and is conventionally dated as beginning in 1945. The titanic struggle of World War II was over, and amidst the widespread feelings of relief and exhaustion there was also the sense that a significant watershed in the history of the continent had been reached, that the ending of the war heralded the beginning of a new reality. Central to this changed atmosphere was the belief that the war had been a cleansing agent. The European economies were in ruins or at the least had been severely disrupted, and the old political systems had either been discredited for their inadequacies in coping with the economic conditions of the 1920s and 1930s, or destroyed by Hitler and his allies. Many people therefore thought and argued that Europe could start afresh, with a different political and economic order that rejected the tired doctrines of nationalism, political sovereignty and economic autarky upon which the old state system of the continent had been built. In its place they wanted some kind of political union or federation that would effectively put into practice the old symbolic concept of the harmony of European nations.

Yet while this ferment of the months surrounding the final cessation of hostilities may have provided the seed bed for the developments in European integration in the years since 1945, the idea of and the desire for unity had had a much more prolonged prologue. Across the centuries intellectuals and political leaders alike had dreamed of overcoming the unique historical characteristic of Europe: its extreme political fragmentation. Most obviously, the historical record is replete with attempts at conquest: political leaders from Charlemagne through the Habsburgs to Napoleon, and even perhaps Hitler, had sought to realise the dream through imperial domination of the continent. Yet in the end all aspirations came to nought, defeated in part by the complex fragmented mosaic of the continent as well as by the inadequate technical resources of the would-be conquerors to establish and maintain effective control by force over large areas of territory against the wishes of the local populations.

But the dream of unity was not confined to would-be military conquest. Intellectuals and thinkers had also persistently returned to the theme; some of their ideas and views on the necessity of union proved to have some lasting effect on the history of European integration. The role model adopted by many writers was perhaps the old Roman Empire, which was perceived as having integrated the whole of civilised Europe. It was this civilising aspect which appealed to many, a united Christian Europe at peace with itself and better able to defend itself against depredations and invasions from outside. The greatest value of unity, in other words, was the maintenance of peace and the avoidance of war. This was the theme of early devotees of Europe such as Pierre Dubois, a jurist and diplomat for the courts of both France and England, and his proposal of 1306 for a permanent assembly of princes working to secure peace through the application of Christian principles, or Maximilien de Béthune, the Due de Sully, who suggested a federation of states that would better be able to defend Europe against Turkish threats. Such early schemes and ideas were all universalist, as well as being directed towards achieving a greater political influence for some specific state or dynasty: they embraced all Christian Europe, accepted the rights of princes, and often saw ultimate authority, if any, residing with an emperor or pope.

As the Enlightenment and ideas on liberalism and democracy began to take firmer root, the focus of integrative schemes shifted away from the religious unity of Europe towards its intellectual unity, and away from the rights of princes and kings towards a broader institutional framework that explicitly or implicitly meant the end of independent territorial units. The prominent English Quaker, William Penn, was one of the first to argue, in 1693, for a European parliament and the end of the state mosaic in Europe. The theme was sustained by eighteenth century writers: Jeremy Bentham, for instance, reiterated the argument for a European assembly as well as urging the creation of a common army, while Jean-Jacques Rousseau was also in favour of a European iederation.

All of these ideas and views fed into the even greater intellectual agitation of the nineteenth century, much of which acknowledged in particular its debt to the work of Henri Saint-Simon. In 1814 Saint-Simon advanced a stronger and more detailed scheme for institutional unity, embracing a European monarch, government and parliament. The links with thinkers of the past were preserved through what was the dominant motif for Saint-Simon and his followers: peace through a United States of Europe. The latter was a phrase well understood by nineteenth century intellectuals. It was the theme or catchphrase of the several peace movements that in the event were to be principal torch bearers of integration throughout the century. The French novelist and publicist, Victor Hugo, used it, for example, at the Paris Peace Congress of 1849, while eighteen years later a similar congress established a journal with that very title.

Yet these were but schemes advanced by people who were, at the most, only at the fringes of politics. They held little appeal or relevance for political leaders. The same, however, was not so true of the parallel development of ideas on some form of economic integration. Many political leaders could see potential political advantages in either a customs union or some form of free trade area. The distinction between these two forms of economic structure is important for it proved to be the fundamental dividing line in all debates on European integration and organisation through to the present. For that reason it may be useful to spell out the basic distinction at this point. Briefly, in a customs union the member states would belong to a single tariff area where, ideally, there would be no customs duties on goods circulating within the union, though the members would construct a common external boundary where a common tariff would be levied on all imports entering the union from outside. By contrast, a free trade area is a looser concept, with much more limited political implications. There would be no common external tariff, with each member state free to impose its own tariff levels on goods coming from non-members: the goal was merely to eliminate or reduce internal tariffs, but usually without any compulsion to do so.

Attempts to launch such economic schemes on a continental basis were not successful. Essays into free trade arrangements proved to be short-lived, while customs unions like the prototypic Zollverein of 1843 were region-specific, not European: as such they were protectionist and disliked by other states. In a sense, economic ideas on unity suffered the same fate as political ideas on the same theme. The nineteenth century witnessed an ever-increasing imperialist competition among states, an assertion of the supremacy of national autarky and intensification of competition that eventually culminated in World War I.

The war and its aftermath, in radically redrawing the political map of Europe and launching several new states on to the scene, should ideally have made political and economic cooperation, if not integration, even more pressing. On the other hand, the war that was supposed to impose a durable peace upon Europe, the ‘war to end war’, had, in accepting the idea of national self-determination as the basic building block of the new Europe, actually increased the obstacles to cooperation and integration. With the disintegration of the old empires of Central and Eastern Europe, the continent had become even more fragmented, with an almost inevitable reinforcement of nationalism. In addition, the defeat of Germany imposed a further instability over and above fragmentation. The hope that in 1918 had been placed in the newly-established League of Nations also quickly evaporated. New states, jealous of their independence and giving governmental expression to historic national and ethnic rivalries, were not in a mood to accept any diminution of their political and economic freedom. Moreover, the economic problem had been made worse by a reduction of Europe’s economic role in the world: the continent’s foreign trade, as a share of the gross national product of the industrialised states of the world, had slumped dramatically.

THE INTER-WAR YEARS

In the highly charged postwar atmosphere it was almost inevitable that in the 1920s Europe would move towards more and nigher tariff barriers. By the end of the decade the notion of countries imposing quota restrictions upon imports into their territory had become a popular theme. Insofar as support was given to a belief in economic cooperation, it was towards more limited structures, such as regional agreements or those like the International Steel Cartel of 1926 established by a number of independent steel companies and meant to control Europe’s export market, in part through restrictions on trade.

Generally speaking, it was only the smaller states of Western Europe that expressed an interest in exploring new customs arrangements. Belgium and Luxembourg, for example, established a Belux economic union in 1922, though its practical effects were very limited. Perhaps the most important attempt was made through the Oslo Convention of 1930, in which the Low Countries and the Scandinavian states agreed to some limited measures to peg tariffs. While the Convention survived the decade, it was not particularly successful. Indeed, the attempt by the Low Countries in the Ouchy Convention of 1932, a follow-up to Oslo, to move further towards a cooperative lowering of tariffs proved too radical for the Scandinavian states to stomach. The larger states remained totally uninterested in such ventures, if not – like Britain – actively hostile to them. While Oslo and Ouchy, abortive though they were, perhaps offered a pointer to the future, of far more immediacy for the present, and symbolic of Europe’s drirt away from free trade, was Britain’s decision in 1931 to abandon multilateral free trade, of which historically it had been the arch-proponent, and to establish under the Ottawa Agreement a system of imperial preference within its empire.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the seemingly parlous political and economic state of post-1918 Europe, the idea of integration and cooperation as the way forward to a better future continued to be expounded. Even in the early 1920s, the number of groups advocating this route were legion: however, the only one which has achieved any kind of lasting memory was the Pan-European Union, founded by the Austrian aristocrat, Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, in 1923. Coudenhove-Kalergi was a tireless publicist, and through the Union and publications such as his Paneuropa of 1923 he argued forcefully for a European federation. His ideas were not new, but he did succeed in attracting to the Union several prominent politicians such as Eauard Benes, the foreign minister of Czechoslovakia, and Aristide Briand and Edouard Herriot, future premiers of France. Among the membership of the Pan-European Union could be found the names of people like Konrad Adenauer, Georges Pompidou and Carlos Sforza, men who were to figure strongly in the story of European integration after 1945.

The major aim of the Union followed in the footsteps of its nineteenth century predecessors: to prevent war and maintain the peace, but now not to guard Europe against alien hordes but to allow it to compete more effectively in the world’s economic markets. But in setting out its objectives, the Union still detected an external enemy, and in so doing it marked the first contraction in the territorial definition of European unity. As a result of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Bolshevism was accused of being an enemy of peace, and hence the Soviet Union was not to be part of the proposed structure; nor incidentally, did Coudenhove-Kalergi seem to regard Britain as a potential participant.

The impressive list of politicians that stood in the ranks of the Union could not disguise the fact that, like its contemporaries and predecessors, it was unable to acnieve any practical results. No government responded to its clarion call, though some government figures, like Briand and Herriot, advocated similar views outside the context of the Union. The first major statement by a leading politician was perhaps made by Edouard Herriot, the prime minister of France, who in a speech on European security, declared on 24 October 1924, ‘Let us create, ii it is possible, a United States of Europe’, something to which he returned in subsequent years but without trying to set in motion anything that might enable the objective to be achieved. His compatriot, Aristide Briand, in signing the Locarno Pact in October 1925 on behalf of France, saw it as a first step towards the same goal.

It was Briand, however, who first attempted to advance the debate to a governmental level. At the League of Nations in Geneva, he proposed, in September 1929, a scheme of union which would involve a ‘confederal’ bond between European peoples. The following year he circulated a memorandum on the same theme to other European governments. The Briand Memorandum of 1 May 1930 represents the first official endorsement of ideas on integration, in a fairly specific political format.

In fact, the Memorandum was rather vague and a dilution of the implications of Briand’s original proposal. While it did introduce the novel notion of a permanent political committee and secretariat, its objective was seemingly merely a union between governments within the framework of the League of Nations. Similarly, it said little about possibilities for an economic union beyond suggesting a ‘rationalisation’ of customs barriers. Briand’s ideas, like those of Herriot before him, came perhaps more from the desire of France to ensure an effective security for itself, especially against Germany. Briand had been the architect of the 1925 Locarno Pact, whose signatories (Belgium, Britain, France, Germany and Italy) had guaranteed existing state frontiers and renounced war between themselves. The Briand Memorandum could be taken as being primarily another effort by France to ensure the perpetuation of the peace settlement imposed upon Germany in the Treaty of Versailles.

Even though the Briand Plan ultimately did not envisage the loss of sovereign rights by states, official responses to it were muted and, where favourable, couched in vague and circumspect language. To have succeeded, it would have required the endorsement of the other major states. However, Britain was deeply sceptical, while in Italy Mussolini was totally hostile to it. Attitudes in Germany were mixed, but with strongly expressed fears that it was little more than a stratagem to guarantee French hegemony on the continent. Although France tried to modify the plan, it had to all intents and purposes been abandoned even before Briand’s death in March 1932. Its one organisational legacy was a ‘Study Group on European Union’ located in Geneva within the League of Nations secretariat, a body which, ironically, was itself out of sympathy with the whole idea.

With the collapse of Briand’s efforts, the search for integration was returned to private organisations. While these continued to flourish, including some new ones like the Federal Union of 1938, the 1930s were a particularly barren time for the proponents of European unity. Economic depression, the rise of Fascism, and the lengthening shadow of Adolf Hitler led countries to look to their own defences. European integration, in any shape or form, was not to be a serious topic of discussion until the closing stages of World War II.

THE IMPACT OF WORLD WAR II

It was the war itself which was the catalyst for a new surge of interest in European unity, leading to negative assessments of the prewar political situation and economic practices. Once the tide of war had swung in their favour, the protagonists of the struggle against Hitler and his allies began to turn their attention towards the future and the reconstruction of Europe. The idea of unity resurfaced again, but this time as part of an argument that retention of the historic notion of the independent state as the foundation of political organisation had been discredited and that it should be abandoned, to be substituted by a concerted effort at unifying state practices that in time might lead to a comprehensive continental political community. The thrust of these arguments, however, was rarely to be found among the exiled or potential governments of the continent. It was among the Resistance movements of occupied Europe that the voice of unity was most strongly heard.

While in each occupied country the Resistance was essentially a loose amalgam of numerous factions, divided both regionally and by political affiliation and ideology, with each group jealous of its own autonomy, there was nevertheless something that might, with some license, be called the philosophy of the Resistance. It was a view of the future that extended a welcome to all those who felt that a new spirit should be injected into European reconstruction after the war. Brought together by the necessity of fighting a common enemy, men and women from all the political persuasions within the Resistance, and from all walks of life, seemed genuinely determined to forget their differences in the fight for a common, peaceful and harmonious future.

The Resistance dream was that the wartime camaraderie would persist into the postwar world to encompass the whole of society. And, because of their active role in the struggle against Nazism, many thought that the political leadership of postwar Europe would be drawn from the ranks of Resistance activists. The scenario for reconstruction was all-embracing; but central to that scenario was the concept of a united Europe. The new morality which the Resistance deemed necessary did not stop at national boundaries. Nationalism and national pride stood accused of being root causes of past European wars. Resistance views on the future therefore stressed the need to transcend historical national boundaries, dismissed as artificial and discredited, in order to rebuild a revitalised and genuine European community.

Declarations to this effect were made long before the end of the war, with statements on union being produced independently and more or less simultaneously by Resistance groups in Czechoslovakia, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Yugoslavia, as well as by underground groups in Germany. During 1944, for example, several French Resistance groups in both France and North Africa argued for some supranational structure in Europe, built along federal lines, to replace the old system of independent states. The most vociferous groups, perhaps, were to be found in Italy, with many insisting that constructing a new federal Europe should take priority even over economic reconstruction. It was, in fact, in Italy that the idea of postwar union was first set out, in the Ventotene Manifesto of July 1941, written in, and smuggled out of, jail by Altiero Spinelli (who was to be an ardent European federalist throughout his later life) and his associates. The Ventotene ideas were adopted by the Italian Resistance as a whole, and led eventually to the formation in August 1943 of a European Federalist Movement (Movimento Federalista Europeo) which pledged itself to contact and align itself with similar groups in other countries.

It was Italian activists who took the lead in organising a series of meetings in neutral Switzerland. These culminated in a major conference in Geneva in July 1944. The document that emerged from the conference, largely written by Spinelli, received wide circulation in Europe. It argued for a federal Europe with a written constitution, a supranational government directly responsible to the people of Europe and not national governments, along with an army under its control, with no other military forces being permitted. The government would be supplemented by a judicial tribunal which would have the sole authority to interpret the constitution and to arbitrate in conflicts between the federation and its constituent states. Apart apparently from the representatives from Denmark and Norway, all the delegates endorsed the declaration of the necessity for a completely new federal Europe and democratic governmental structure for the whole of Europe.

The Geneva statement and other documents expressing similar sentiments were widely publicised in Resistance circles. They helped reinforce the belief of many Resistance leaders that nothing short of total political reconstruction would be acceptable. I...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Editorial Foreword
• Chapter One. The Persisting Idea of Europe
• Chapter Two. The Cold War, the United States and Europe
• Chapter Three. The Opening Gambits
• Chapter Four. The European Coal and Steel Community
• Chapter Five. The Road to Rome
• Chapter Six. The European Economic Community
• Chapter Seven. The Europe of the Seven
• Chapter Eight. De Gaulle and the EEC
• Chapter Nine. The Question of Enlargement
• Chapter Ten. Movement on all Fronts
• Chapter Eleven. The Revival of Ambition
• Chapter Twelve. The Emergence of Summitry
• Chapter Thirteen. The Internal Policy World of the EC
• Chapter Fourteen. Problems of Territorial Assimilation
• Chapter Fifteen. The Search for Political Integration
• Chapter Sixteen. Towards 1992
• Chapter Seventeen. An Ever Closer Union?
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Appendix 4
• Appendix 5
• A Guide to Further Reading
• Map showing the growth of the European Economic Community
• Index