Download ΟΜΙΛΙΑ ΝΤΙΝΑΣ ΜΠΟΤΣΙΟΥ, 27/3/12 “The origins of European

ΟΜΙΛΙΑ ΝΤΙΝΑΣ ΜΠΟΤΣΙΟΥ, 27/3/12
“The origins of European integration: goals and strategies”
These days mark the 55th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome. In these five and a
half decades historians and political scientists have sought to define the nature of
European integration. Was it the physical off-spring of fascism and war, as idealists
claim? Was it a by-product of the Cold War, as realists suggest? Was it vision or
pragmatism that informed the decisions of the so-called “founding fathers”? To
answer such questions, one has to explore the mix of history, culture, events and
personalities that shaped integration.
The equation looks plain in the era of bipolarity. West European countries were
bound together by the common Soviet threat. The issue becomes more complicated
in the period after 1990, when impressive steps were taken: German re-unification,
eastern enlargement, establishment of a common currency and foundation of a
closer union. European countries were no more bound together by an obvious
external menace. Actually, the only common menace seemed to be the breakdown
of integration. Although much stronger than in 1945, every single nation-state, big or
small, more or less developed, East or West European, kept feeling too weak to
continue on its own. The divisive past was still the common enemy. The same past
that made intra-European war unthinkable.
This perception reveals a great durability of the principles of European integration.
For West Europeans became convinced already in the 1950s that not only growth,
but also security were not attainable outside the context of integration.
European Movements
That was not the only option available at the time. Many political programs were
competing for the re-organization of Europe. It was the responsibility of European
leaders to take the proper option.
European Movement
To be sure, they were all motivated by the idea of European unity. Some of them had
also participated in European movements. But they were not representing those
organizations. A serious misunderstanding about European integration is the direct
correlation made between the actual European Communities and the various
European movements, namely the numerous alliances of intellectuals, politicians and
activists that propagated European unification.
First of all, those organizations created a favorable ideological environment. But they
were marginal in the actual formation of the European Communities. Second, the
European movement was very heterogeneous. It extended from federalists and
Socialists to pacifists and 2
conservatives. The former pictured Europe as a neutral “Third Force” that would
achieve social transformation by saying “no” both to American capitalism and Soviet
communism. The latter propagated the “United States of Europe” as a third Great
Power between the two new superpowers, an idea originating in the interwar
“Paneuropa” of Graf Coudenhove-Kalergi. Resistance leaders preached
democratization and human rights. Conservative elites championed a federal Europe
of Christian values. All those projects aimed to avert a new European conflict. But
they took for granted that Europe was still a great power and that Europe’s main
problem was German revanchism. They were namely largely embedded in the
experience of the two World Wars.
Cold War
Those projects lost relevance when the wartime allies entered a path of confrontation
in 1946/47. The “iron curtain” fell at the heart of Europe, in Berlin, and in precarious
areas of conflict, like Greece. No one could really say where Soviet expansion or
subversion would stop. Instead of ambitious power politics, West European nations
cared for survival and national freedom. Rapid reconstruction became top priority.
But it could not be settled without tackling the German problem. However, to most
countries in Europe, especially to France, it looked absolutely pre-mature to consider
Germany part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
B-F-D
In the two major countries, Britain and France, the issue was how to take advantage
of German natural resources for postwar reconstruction. Britain promoted the
reactivation of the German economy, whereas France sought to appropriate its
industrial areas, mainly the Ruhr and Saar. In order to pacify Paris, Britain signed two
pacts of collective defense with France, one only with France in March 1947 –the
Dunkirk Pact- the other with France and the Benelux countries -the Brussels Pact- in
March 1948. Yet, Britain was reluctant to go as far as to engage in a supranational
European organization to keep Germany at bay, as the French wanted. The basis of
British power lay outside Europe, in the Commonwealth. Since the War, the
relationship with the US had also become more important than ties with the
continent. Supranational integration threatened Britain’s economic freedom overseas
for the sake of a dubious control of Germany. It was a policy Britain did not want to
adopt and France did not dare assert alone. This realization separated the two
countries that could have jointly taken the lead in postwar Europe at the cost of
Germany, which was not legitimized to play any role until that moment.
US-Marshall Plan
It was the United States who guided Western Europe out of the dead-end through
the European Recovery Program. The Marshall Plan imposed strict multilateral
coordination of the West European economies in order to offer them super-growth
and self-sustainability by 1952. Accordingly, the Western zones of Germany were
decisively included into the Plan. Washington considered German participation
indispensable for building peace and security in 3
Europe as well as for convincing Congress to finance America’s growing
international commitments.
Reconstruction funds were made conditional upon the creation of a permanent
organization that would promote trade liberalization, a payments union and
supranational structures. French and British resistance did not permit the
Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), to attain solid
supranational characteristics. But Washington took full control of the Marshall Plan.
Its persistence on closer European cooperation built a strong integrative force. It
must be noted, though, that, even though the United States jumpstarted and
sponsored the process of European integration, it hardly remained the chief influence
on its final shape. To be sure, since the 1960s the relations between the United
States and the Six became openly antagonistic in many fields and not just because
of the challenge posed by Charles de Gaulle.
1949
The turning point in the course of European cooperation was marked by the year
1949. NATO was founded in April 1949 to provide collective security under the
American nuclear guarantee. While the Marshall Plan cared for reconstruction, the
Council of Europe was founded in May 1949 to inspect the process of
democratization.
But that was not enough to the French. The Western German territories had evolved
into a German state in summer 1949 and the US signaled their intention to utilize the
German military potential, shaken as they were by the first Soviet atomic bomb and
the establishment of a communist Chinese state. The communist coup in
Czechoslovakia and the Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948-49 bolstered further the
idea that Germans needed the means to self-defense. But for accepting German rearmament only four years after the end of the war, France had to overcome its
existential fear towards the neighbor that had invaded it three times in 70 years.
Monnet-Schuman
The leap forward required exceptional leadership. This was offered by Jean Monnet
and Robert Schuman. In May 1950 the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman
proposed the creation of a European Coal and Steel Community. Economic
considerations were very important for that decision. But it was a political decision.
Monnet and Schuman realized that France would never be safe if West Europe
weren’t. The American nuclear guarantee was neither enough nor eternal.
Europeans had to work out their own problems in order to survive in the long run as
free nations. To that end, they had to rebuild trust among them, despite the two
devastating world wars. If Paris made the first step, the rest would follow. France
decided to solve the German problem by curbing its own national sovereignty, too,
through supranational integration.
It started with Coal and Steel, the basic materials of industry and war, of economy
and security. The Federal Republic of Germany was gaining equality by sharing its
national potential. 4
The Coal and Steel Community was a middle solution between federal and
nationalist ideas. But it was supranational enough to drive the British away. Only in
1954/55 was Britain associated with the Coal and Steel Community. The Six
founding countries were France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Belgium,
Luxemburg and the Netherlands -the Benelux countries. The mastermind of the
project, Jean Monnet, was appointed first President of the Community’s central
organ, the High Authority, located in Luxemburg, the smallest state of the Six.
The Community of the Six absorbed the lessons of both World Wars. France
contained terrible historical ghosts to accept Germany as an equal partner. But it
considered reconciliation vital to its own national security. If Germany were isolated,
it would play into the hands of either nationalism or communism. Europeanization
fortified the German border as a West European border towards the Soviets.
Adenauer
That border was drawn only because the Germans gave their genuine consent.
Among the Six, they faced the most complex decisions. To Konrad Adenauer, the
first Chancellor of the Federal Republic, Germans had two options. The one was to
make re-unification a top priority, as advocated by the Socialists under Kurt
Schumacher. The other was, in reverse, to seek first integration of the young Federal
Republic into Western Europe as a means to create a Western democratic re-unified
Germany in the future. If re-unification came first, then Germans had to make serious
concessions to the Soviet Union that held the key to their independence. These
could range from neutrality at the mildest– the Finland model- to Soviet custody. If
Western integration came first, then the German nation would de facto recognize its
partition. The Soviets would lock the door to re-unification for good. But the Federal
Republic would belong to an area of freedom, security and growth. The dilemma was
“re-unification now under Soviet surveillance or Westernization now of half
Germany”?: “ Bonn or Berlin”?
Adenauer did not hesitate right from the outset. Germany would be safe, only if it
followed the West. To do so, it had to eliminate suspicion and fear on the part of its
neighbors. It had to make concessions, not to Moscow, but first of all to Paris and the
rest Western partners. Adenauer’s credo originated in his analysis of the Cold War.
He saw Germany’s most formidable enemy in the Soviet Union, not in partition.
Partition was the cost Germany had to pay for its survival as a free and liberal
democracy. Therefore, he rejected the idea of Europe as a neutralist Third Force
mediating between the Superpowers. As long as the Red Army was stationed at the
heart of Europe, mediation would just open the door to Soviet expansionism. This
reading of the international order delivered Adenauer to accusations that he was
compromising vital national interests. But it also gave him unshakable faith in the
necessity of integration. Therefore, Adenauer not only joined the Coal and Steel
Community, which was established in 1951, but he also embraced the next French
proposal for the formation of a European Defense Community. 5
EDC
The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 proved Adenauer right as to the
menace posed by communism. The US and Britain urged German rearmament in
order to deal with conventional threats. France feared that a German army would not
remain for long under the thumb of Washington. To arrest such a course, the French
Prime Minister René Pleven proposed in October 1950 German re-armament within
a European Army. The European Defense Community would follow the model of the
Coal and Steel Community.
The Pleven-Plan won the support of both Americans and British as well as of
France’s rest 5 partners. Adenauer was eager to accept the extraordinary restrictions
that the Plan foresaw for the German army. The Treaty was indeed signed by the Six
in May 1952. But it was never ratified. It failed in the French National Assembly in
August 1954. France proved unwilling to share its defense planning, especially at a
time of low national self-confidence after its defeat in Indochina. Stalin’s death in
1953 had also generated détente initiatives that made the Soviet threat, thus also the
possible use of German arms, less imminent.
As a result, German re-armament ran through NATO. The Federal Republic of
Germany entered the Alliance in 1954/55. To placate Paris, Britain extended its own
military guarantee to include Germany and Italy into the Brussels Pact, which was
transformed into the Western European union (WEU). Similarly, the US President
Dwight Eisenhower extended the collective security clause of NATO to the WEU: any
threat against the WEU would be considered a threat against NATO. Hence,
European defense was split from European integration: European integration-Atlantic
defense, that was the division of labor.
EPC-EEC
Even though stillborn, the European Defense Community had revealed various
national concepts about integration.
De Gasperi-EPC
A prominent example had been the proposal for a Political Community put forward by
Alcide de Gasperi in 1951. The Italian Prime Minister suggested the creation of a
union with federal characteristics and constitutional foundations. A European
Parliament would serve as a Constituent Assembly. De Gasperi welcomed FrenchGerman rapprochement, but he opposed French-German hegemony over Western
Europe. He believed that the politicization of the European Communities would best
secure the equal treatment of both big and smaller players.
Robert Schuman took up his agenda, although back in Paris many leaders,
especially in the revived Gaullist camp, were chilled at the prospect of political
integration. The Benelux hoped to use a lees supranational scheme to win over
Churchill’s new government in Britain, but, again, to no avail. Paul van Zeeland, the
Belgian Foreign Minister, expressed also a preference for economic, not political
integration, first. Finally, the Dutch government declared that it would accept political
supranational structures, only if they were built upon a customs union and a common
market. In December 1952, the Dutch Foreign Minister Johan Beyen proposed the
creation of a European Economic Community. 6
Germany, Italy and the Benelux agreed. But France declined, as the scheme
demanded serious political compromise. Its counter-proposal was minimalistic:
political integration would plainly run through of an elected European Parliament.
That retreat divided the Six and contributed to the collapse of the entire plan for a
defense, economic and political community in 1954.
Treaties of Rome
The idea of comprehensive integration was soon replaced by step-by-step policies.
The key figure was now Paul-Henri Spaak as Foreign Minister of Belgium from 1954
to 1958. Spaak had become familiar with the various schools of integration, both
British and continental, as he had served in the Council of Europe (1949-1951)
before becoming President to the Assembly of the European Coal and Steel
Community (1952-1953). In 1952-53 he headed the Ad hoc Convention that
presented the Six with a Plan for a European Political Community. Therefore, he was
well equipped to design a more moderate, rather functionalist mode of integration
that would achieve European consensus.
EEC-EURATOM
Spaak lost the strategic alliance of Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet. Schuman had
been removed from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1952 and Monnet was
replaced as President of the ECSC High Authority by Rene Mayer in 1955. Hence,
Spaak forged a new alliance with Johan Beyen, who kept alive his proposal for an
Economic Community. Spaak and Beyen were eager to accept Monnet’s proposal for
sectoral integration in the fields of energy, especially atomic energy, and
transportation. But only if they were linked with a broader Economic Community
based on a customs union and a common market. The main argument was that only
comprehensive economic integration would modernize the European economy as a
whole and take political responsibility for the future of Europe. Economic integration
would then render political integration inescapable. The Six needed that leap forward
since the OEEC, the Marshall Plan organization, had exhausted its mission.
Adenauer dismissed the objections of the German Minister of Finance Ludwig
Erhard, that an Economic Community would limit German economic freedom. Again,
the argument was “Europe first”. Adenauer was concerned over East-West détente,
which he considered threatening to Germany’s Western orientation. His concerns
were only aggravated by the Suez crisis in October 1956, when the Americans and
the Soviets confronted jointly the NATO-members Britain and France. Bonn showed
solidarity with France. That German attitude unlocked French European policies.
Treaties of Rome
The French-German rapprochement allowed the fast conclusion of the Treaties of
Rome on March 25, 1957. They established, as projected, a European Community
for Atomic Energy (EURATOM), on the one hand, and a European Economic
Community, on the other. France and Germany settled also the problem of the Saar,
which was re-incorporated into German territory in 1957. 7
Germany offered France serious compensations. First, it allowed the connection of
French colonial territories with the EEC. Second, integration would start in
agriculture, as France sought safe export markets after the loss of its colonial empire.
The common external tariff of the Common Market would protect French exports
from international, read American and German competition. This principle became
later a canon for Charles de Gaulle who made France’s continued participation in the
Community conditional upon the establishment of the Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP). Third, regional subventions would promote economic modernization and a
balanced growth of agriculture, industry and trade. In exchange, Paris accepted that
EURATOM would not monopolize atomic energy in Europe. In the following years,
France precipitated the development of its own national atomic capability, a policy
that was also fulfilled later by de Gaulle.
The EEC and EURATOM had a common institutional denominator. They were both
far less supranational than the Coal and Steel Community or the abortive Defense
Community. That was the cost for re-launching European integration on a basis of
long-term consensus. They also shared a common political denominator. FrenchGerman cooperation was now deeply embedded in the Community. That new reality
convinced even obstinate opponents. Impressively, the German Social Democrats,
the SPD, ratified the Treaties of Rome in 1957. European communist forces
continued to denounce integration as provocative block formation. But in the 1970s
they began to split between orthodox and reformist euro-communist forces.
The British stayed out again. London rejected the EEC as too statist and launched a
loose customs union of Seven OEEC counties, the so-called EFTA, which was
formally established in 1960 (Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland,
Portugal, UK). Thus, they lost a unique opportunity to shape continental European
integration. When they realized the advantages of the European Communities, they
could not enter. When Britain finally entered, it had to adapt to an environment
defined by the ideas and policies of other nations. In retrospect, the search of a
special role in Europe had deprived Britain from assuming a leading role in Europe.
The EEC became the centre of gravity in European integration. In 1968, the three
European Communities (ECSC, EEC, EURATOM) merged into a single European
Community and concluded a customs union. The customs union boosted intraEuropean trade making the Six a distinct economic entity. The CAP secured
compatibility of national production and covered the loss of traditional agricultural
markets in Eastern Europe. More and more, the European Community sought to
unify and solidify the economic policies of its members, starting from trade and
agriculture and moving deeper into a wide range of policies. Its attractiveness lay in
its interventionism, in the stricter and stricter conditionality of harmonization.
Third countries - Greece
Since the 1950s, third countries invested heavily on European integration. Greece
became the first associate member in 1961/62 with the clear objective to achieve full
membership –which materialized in 1979/81. The Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos
Karamanlis made Europeanization the paramount priority of his policy.
Europeanization meant secure Western 8
orientation and prosperity. Above all, it meant modernization along the lines of
economic competitiveness, social cohesion and the rule of law. “Europe first”
became also here the twin policy of democratization also after 1974. It took the rest
Greek political forces a long time to embrace his European policies. Not without
serious cost and grave misunderstandings about its strategic objectives. The defects
were revealed by the current crisis. The answer of the European Union is deeper
economic and political integration.
Karamanlis signed up for the unique political achievement of the founding fathers. Its
uniqueness lay in the merge of nation states with supranational organs. Alan Milward
rightly noticed that integration rescued the nation-state, which, despite fascism,
remained the major political model in postwar Europe.
But the nation-state was not the same anymore. It was not war that transformed it. It
was European leaders who dared reform it. Monnet, Schuman, Adenauer, Spaak, de
Gasperi, Beyen, later Karamanlis himself changed the definition of national interest in
order to implant it irreversibly into a new form of supranational political order. It was a
groundbreaking reform because it had to uproot mutual distrust, open hate or proud
patriotism over the war ruins and over the fresh graves of millions of war victims. But
the new definition of national interest promised that conflict would not be an option
anymore. This core idea enabled the Community to outlive the Cold War and many
minor and major crises.
European countries still support integration because it is in their national interest,
which more and more coincides with the common European good. Even today, it is
difficult to tell the difference between the two levels of interest. This is the most
lasting political legacy of the founders of European integration. The force that created
it was obviously neither visions nor pragmatism, but rather statesmanship. They
rebuilt their nation-states and Europe. They rebuilt their nations-states through
Europe.