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The History of European
Integration
One must begin by asking why the
EU exists at all
• There are historical, political and economic
forces shaping its evolution
• The EU is not a new idea. It is centuries old.
• The Roman empire was the first substantive
attempt to unify Europe.
• The Roman Church adopted the same political
ambitious. The Papacy was the first institution to
use the concept of Europe in a political sense. It
symbolized the Respublicana Christiana.
• Charlemagne moulded a Holy Roman Empire
around the idea.
FROM HENRY THE IV TO HITLER
• Henry the IV of France designed a
Christian Commonwealth of Europe.
• Napoleon tried to realize the same
ambition either as liberator or as a dictator.
• Hitler wanted to establish a European
Reich, as a vital area of German people.
The position of Intellectuals
• Intellectuals from Kant to Rousseau, Marx to Nietzsche
all presented the European unification as an ultimate
political good.
• Nietzsche expressed, in prophetic terms, this attitude:
“what matters is the One Europe, and I see it being
prepared slowly and hesitantly. We have to create a new
synthesis: the European of the future. The small States
of Europe-I mean all our present empires and States-will
become economically untenable, within a short time, by
reason of the absolute tendency of industry and
commerce to become bigger and bigger, crossing
national boundaries and becoming world wide”.
Political initiatives
• Before the last two world wars, the dominant idea was
the balance of powers between nation states.
• The first world convinced everyone that this Bismarckian
principle could not itself guarantee peace.
• The rise of Hitler led to a rapid intensification of interest
in European Federalism.
• In 1939, a Constitution of the European Federation was
drafted by lawyers.
• Economists proposed various kinds of customs unions.
The “Regime of European Federal Union”, elaborated by
Briand, is based on economic principles, without omitting
appropriate institutional structures and moral principles
securing the “simple pact of economic solidarity”.
THE TWO CAMPS
• At this time, Hitler was also presented as an
advocate of a European unity.
• European union has always been an idea close
to the heart of European fascist movements, by
promoting the principle of shared “racial
affinities”.
• The future generation of European rulers had
divided into two alternative political camps.
Those, such as Churchill and de Gaulle, who
had as a basis the idea of the nation state; and
the socialists, whose declared ambition, was its
destruction.
The role of the USA
• Having contributed to win the war, the USA
wanted a say in how the new Europe should
look.
• Because of a desire to limit the extent, expense
and duration of their involvement in establishing
the new Europe, the USA became increasingly
supportive of the federal agenda.
• One of the conditions of the Marshall Plan was
for the establishment of a “European economic
federation”, which was subsequently realized in
the Organization for European Economic
Cooperation (OEEC)
Europe, Germany and Strategies
• In the years following the war, governing Europe was
really a matter of governing Germany.
• The problem was not a new military threat, but the
German economic reconstruction.
• The British determination of an intergovernmental
approach increasingly irritated the US State department.
The niceties of Sovereignty were costing millions of US
dollars. Moreover, a supranational Europe could block
Soviet expansion.
• For the Socialists, the European idea represented much
more than a way of effecting economic reconstruction. It
could represent a means of moving beyond US
hegemony.
The institutional structure of Europe
• In the post-war years, a number of
intergovernmental
organizations
were
established, both world-wide and Europe-wide,
including the IMF, GATT(WTO), NATO, the
Council of Europe, and the Benelux Union.
• The Benelux union, as a customs union of
Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, can be seen
as a model for future European integration.
• The first substantive step towards European
integration was the establishment of the
European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC).