The European Union Explained

Institutions, Actors, Global Impact

Andreas Staab

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780253009760
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"An informative, well-paced, and clearly articulated narrative of the European Union's development" (Jennifer Yoder, Colby College). This brief and accessible introduction to the European Union is ideal for anyone who needs a concise overview of the structure, history, and policies of the EU. This updated edition includes a new chapter on the sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone. Andreas Staab offers basic terms and interpretive frameworks for understanding the evolution of the EU; the overall structure, purpose, and mandate of its main constituent divisions; and key policy areas, such as market unification and environmental policy. "Readers in America and Europe alike will benefit from the very considerable expertise revealed in these pages." —Hugh Dykes, House of Lords, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson on the European Union "A fine introduction to the European Union and will appeal to a range of collections, from political science and business holdings to college-level collections strong in the media." —Midwest Book Review

PART ONE

THE EVOLUTION OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

1

Parameters of European Integration

Given the multitude of treaties, political actors, and policies, trying to gain an understanding of European integration can indeed be a daunting task. Coming to terms with the European Union is further complicated by often confusing official terminology with similar sounding names. What is the difference, after all, between the European Council, the Council of Europe, and the Council of the European Union? And exactly how does the European Community differ from the European Economic Community and the European Union? In answering these questions, this chapter introduces the key processes, actors, and developments that have shaped European integration ever since the start of the project in the 1950s. The key issues are the following:

1. Policies, political actors, and political developments involved in supranational or intergovernmental integration.

2. The factors contributing to early European cooperation that were common to all West European states versus those relevant only in certain countries.

3. The Eurosclerosis of the 1970s that resulted from the Luxembourg Compromise in the 1960s.

4. The re-launch of European integration in the 1980s.

5. The 2001 Treaty of Nice and its goal of preparing the European Union for enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe.

6. The impact of the Lisbon Treaty of 2009 on the future development of the European Union.

The Concept of European Integration

European integration is most frequently associated with the period after the end of the Second World War, as Western European states increasingly cooperated during various developmental stages of the European Union. But the concept of governing Europe actually has a far longer history. From the Roman Empire of Julius Caesar to Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin, European history is marked by many attempts to organize the multitude of nations and ethnicities into a more or less coherent political entity with competing views of how the different states should be related and the degree to which autonomy and sovereignty should be preserved. Nonetheless, though the concept of an integrated Europe is not new, without question the European Union, the most recent vehicle for organizing Europe, has, to date, been a highly successful attempt at integration.

Minimalism versus Maximalism

With the end of the Second World War, debates over European integration again dominated the political agenda. Europe had just been through one of the most damaging and catastrophic events mankind had ever experienced, and there was a pressing need for an organizational vehicle that finally would be able to deliver peace and ultimately prosperity. The debates centered on two different views of European integration that would characterize many of the future discussions on the subject. The “maximalist” view called for a federal structure with the goal of establishing the United States of Europe, whereas the “minimalist” view envisioned a loose union based largely on trade relations between sovereign member states. The maximalists were personified by the Italian political philosopher Altiero Spinelli, and the minimalists were championed by the former prime minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill. Churchill’s position developed from the perspective of a European country that did not endure fascist occupation and that emerged victorious from World War II. The UK could also look back on a strong democratic tradition, a powerful Commonwealth, and strong political and economic links with the United States. Borrowing heavily from the German philosopher Immanuel Kant and his work on “Perpetual Peace,” Churchill, in a famous speech in Zurich in 1946, argued that one way of establishing peace would be to forge closer ties among the peoples of Europe through stronger trade relations. The prospect of war would then be greatly reduced, since any possible hostilities across borders would threaten one’s potential trade partners and customers. Churchill, confusingly, termed this project the “United States of Europe,” but in reality it was a watered-down version of what America’s Founding Fathers had in mind (see Table 1.1).

Table 1.1. Minimalism vs. Maximalism

Minimalism	Maximalism
• Winston Churchill	• Altiero Spinelli
• Safeguard peace through an economic union (Kant: trading nations do not go to war with one another)	• Economic ties alone are not enough to prevent conflict between nations
• Economic union only	• Economic and political union

Establishing peace along the lines of a trading union did not go far enough for Spinelli. After all, a loose economic union could not be expected to keep in check the rise of another dictator such as Hitler or Stalin. Hence Spinelli argued that only the combination of an economic and a political union could secure long-term peaceful conditions; he had even written a draft constitution for a federal Europe while imprisoned by Mussolini during the Second World War. Spinelli’s supporters had often been accused of envisioning the end of the nation-state in Europe. But, in fact, Spinelli’s view, which grew from the resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Europe where fascism had gravely undermined the nation-state, actually embraced European integration as essential to rescuing the nation-state after two devastating world wars and periods of economic and political instability.

Despite differences in their political objectives, both maximalism and minimalism—both Spinelli and Churchill—supported greater links between European states. With Europeans assessing the scale of devastation, support for European integration in the aftermath of World War II propelled the European Union (EU) into existence. However, the precise modalities of how the Union should be organized and, in particular, the degree of national sovereignty that should be surrendered for the sake of closer integration, remain to this date the essential issues regarding European integration.

Intergovernmentalism versus Supranationalism

At the beginning of the postwar European project, two concepts emerged about how integration could be implemented: supranationalism and intergovernmentalism. With supranationalism, institutions and policies supersede the power of their national equivalents. The European Court of Justice, for example, could issue verdicts that nullify and supersede verdicts reached by national courts. Similarly supranational policies are implemented as political programs that replace their national equivalents. An example is Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), where the EU’s single currency, the Euro, replaces national currencies (see Table 1.2).

Table 1.2. Concepts of European Integration

Intergovernmentalism	Supranationalism
• Integration through cooperation between national governments; no new institutions	• Integration by establishing new institutions and policies that rise above the national sovereignty of member states
• Example: EU foreign policy	• Example: Single European currency

Intergovernmentalism, in contrast, minimizes the creation of new institutions and policies, and conducts European integration through cooperation between national governments. This approach is illustrated in the realm of foreign policy. The EU does not have a foreign minister or a secretary of state, as there is no EU foreign policy worth speaking of, unless all the member state governments agree on an issue. In the case of the war in Iraq, the EU split into two camps, one supporting George Bush’s military intervention and the other supporting continued inspections by the envoy of the United Nations Hans Blix. In light of these two opposing viewpoints a compromise simply could not be reached, which meant that the EU did not have a common foreign policy regarding Iraq. On the other hand, all member states condemned apartheid in South Africa in the late 1980s, and the EU as a whole imposed economic sanctions on that country.

The Impact of the Second World War

In the aftermath of World War II all European states had the staggering problem of reconstructing their economies, and the continent needed, above all, peace and stability. In Europe alone the war had left 15.6 million soldiers and 19.5 million civilians dead. Fifty million people were homeless, and cities and towns were in ruins. In Germany and Great Britain alone, 7 million homes were damaged or destroyed. Europe was facing mountainous challenges. The objective of any responsible government, therefore, was quite obvious: to establish relatively peaceful conditions that would enable the rebuilding of economies, and here, in particular, a largely destroyed infrastructure. The threat of famine was a real-life possibility. Rail networks and roads needed to be replaced; water, heating, and electricity restored; and houses rebuilt—all in the face of the additional problem of millions of refugees fleeing to the West from the advancing communist empire in Central and Eastern Europe. Against these monumental challenges, the first priority was to limit the possibility of a renewed conflict. A potential reemergence of hostilities, the advent of a new antagonistic regime, or military conflict, whether on the scale of a civil war or across borders, would have been catastrophic. But what to do?

The Treaty of Versailles in the aftermath of World War I had presented Europe with a bitter lesson: punishing the aggressors (Germany and Austria) with stifling reparation payments had contributed to the gradual implosion of the Weimar Republic and the eventual rise of fascism, which plunged the continent into another major crisis, only twenty years after the previous one presumably had been resolved. Perhaps a new approach of conciliation and integration would serve Europe better.

In this environment it seemed necessary for the United States to motivate the continent into action. To do so, the U.S. supplied more than $13 billion through the European Recovery Program (ERP), more commonly known as the Marshall Plan. This generous support is explained largely as an effort to block the spread of Soviet Communism to Western Europe. First and foremost, key policy makers in the U.S. feared a shift in political orientation in Europe toward the East and the Soviet Union and away from the United States. Many postwar national elections reflected a mood for change, favoring left-oriented parties that had gained significant support in France, Italy, Greece, and the United Kingdom. In addition, West European states appeared unable to provide food and other basic necessities in the period immediately after the war. The U.S. feared that this crisis could easily erupt into political instability, with communist and potentially even resurgent fascist movements able to gain the political support of a disillusioned electorate. The goal of Marshall Aid, therefore, was to cement the introduction of market-oriented and capitalist economic systems, which ultimately would establish links across the Atlantic and away from the Soviet Union. America’s isolationist policies of the 1930s simply had not worked, as democratic European states, left to their own devices, were unable to contain the expansionist drive of fascism. Thus the Truman administration adopted a more proactive strategy in its foreign policy objectives.

American support provided a compelling financial incentive for cooperation that had not existed before. The result was the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), subsequently renamed the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which essentially was set up by the U.S. to ensure that the Marshall Plan money was distributed in an organized fashion. The OEEC also provided a framework in which European states were introduced to economic cooperation in an institutionalized setting and across national borders. The OEEC, then, was the forum where West European states prepared for the first attempts at supranational integration.

In 1949, shortly after the establishment of the OEEC, European states created the Council of Europe, which evolved from a congress held in the Dutch capital of The Hague the previous year and provided a framework of principles for the protection of human rights and key freedoms considered essential to a free and peaceful Europe. The Council of Europe has since become less influential, but it still plays a role through the institutional machinery that it established in the European Court of Human Rights.¹ In the 1940s, however, the Council of Europe was important in promoting the concept of an integrated Europe, although one based on intergovernmentalism and on the autonomy of the nation-state.

The European Coal and Steel Community

The first impetus to supranational integration came mainly from France, especially from one man, Jean Monnet, a senior civil servant with a keen eye for political opportunity.² He had learned the advantages of economic planning in the U.S., and he applied the lessons with considerable success in the French planning system that he established after the war. Monnet had a straightforward and, because of its simplicity, ultimately brilliant idea. He envisioned that a supranationally regulated Europe-wide market in coal and steel was central to achieving sustained peace in Europe. The brilliance of this idea was that both commodities are essential for war: steel for the production of weapons and coal to provide energy for factories that could produce weapons. Monnet argued that an authority that was independent of national interests could greatly reduce the likelihood of war, at least war on the scale of the previous two world wars. He presented his concept to the French foreign minister Robert Schuman, whose plan (later called the Schuman Plan) specified exactly how a European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) could be created and managed by a “Higher Authority” with “supranational powers.” The Schuman Plan was not altogether altruistic, for it served the French national interest. Monnet’s idea was conceived on the assumption that France would have access to the steel factories and coal reserves of the German Ruhr valley. In the end, France had to forsake this territorial aspiration as the Ruhr area was kept under German control. However, the incorporation of West Germany into the Marshall Plan meant that the French economy would grow in competition with West German industry rather than on the back of it. As a minor token to the French, the ECSC would at least secure French access to the resources of the Ruhr. At this historical juncture, however, the UK decided not to participate in the budding European project. The reason was, quite simply, that in 1945 the UK had elected a left-leaning Labour Party government that embarked on an ambitious economic program which included nationalization of the coal and steel sector. British Prime Minister Clement Atlee justifiably concluded that it would be impossible to supranationalize an industrial sector that only shortly before was subject to nationalization. This mundane historical development accounted for why the British did not jump on the European bandwagon. As it turned out later, the UK’s rejection of the Schuman Plan set the tone for Britain’s European policy ever since. Other European countries, however, responded enthusiastically to Monnet’s vision; not only France and West Germany but also Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg signed up for the ECSC, thereby forming the nucleus of the “original six” that would eventually become the European...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Acronyms
• List of Tables
• Part One  the Evolution of the EU
• Part Two  Institutions
• Part Three  Policies
• Outlook: The Future of European Integration
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index