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Full summary of Political Structures and Processes of the European Union
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Full summary of Political Structures and Processes of the European Union
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Les 1 – History of European integrationHistory of European integration
Corresponds to European history of the 20th century and beyond
o EU started as a coal and steel community (at the time material resources for economic
management)
Finally dealt with the 'high politics' among European capitals
o Economic integration: what we know today as the EU's internal market, but there is also a parallel
story that relates to security cooperation between EU countries
Early seeds, treaties and negotiations are key: much of how the EU works institutionally has its origins in the
beginning
Uniting the continent
6 Member States have founded the European Union (Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Luxembourg, Italy
and the Federal Republic of Germany)
o The story of European integration spreads an economic and political model from the original 6
founding member states to 28 member states => but many signs of partial disintegrate
French 'Empty Chair' Crisis in 1965-1966: France Withdrew Its Ambassador Signed From the
EEC
Brexit 2016 referendum 2020 UK leaves the EU
rule of law debate concerns about polexit: EU law over national law?
After the end of WWII (1945)
o WWII ends with the occupation of Germany by the United States. The UK coming from the West and
the Soviet Union coming from the East. They meet in the middle
o The question after WWII: what comes after the complete destruction of the European continent
during a gigantic military conflict, what actually was the continuation of the conflict in 1914
Founding fathers (all had experienced 2 world wars):
o Konrad Adenauer becomes the post-war German Chancellor and continues a course to steer West
Germany towards its western partners (France and the US)
o George Marshall: Major general in the US military during the war. After the war he became
secretary of state
o Jean Monnet: official of France, who put forward the great ideas of European integration
o Robert Schuman: French Foreign Minister
1950: Schuman plan that would make war between Germany and France impossible
But there were many decades of competition between France and Germany.
Germany was a relatively young EU nation, born in the 19th century in the process
of conflict with France (the Franco-Prussian War of 1870) so for Germany this was
also a fundamental question of what the future would look like under the military
authority of the United States
Was raised in the Alsace-Lorraine region => this piece of land where there was
always a shift of ruler (went all the time between France and Germany)
o Paul Henri Spraak (Belgian foreign minister): If another military conflict breaks out between France
and Germany, it will not be pleasant for everyone involved
, The 5 men had extensive experience with what the wars had brought about. They also had a lot of insights
of what international cooperation could offer
o Example Jean Monnet: During WWI he was a young civil servant for the French state. He was given
the task of planning wartime logistics and ensuring that the front line had sufficient supplies (food,
ammunition). It makes countries stronger when they put their efforts together (rather than several
separately). After the war, Monnet was sent to the League of Nations. Monnet founds out: if all
states retrain national vetoes than there is a risk that the institutional architecture of cooperation
can collapse
The story of the building of the European project begins with a whole generation of individuals deeply
shocked by war experiences and influenced in their thinking by what the wars have shown. They want to do
things differently, to do things more together as states
Economic integration and security cooperation
Economic integration of the European continent => it was an American idea from the beginning:
o It started with an important speech by George Marshall (after he became secretary of state of the
US) in 1947 at Harvard. The main argument Marshall put forward was that the US was ready to
support the economic reconstruction of Europe with financial and material aid but on one condition:
Europeans work together and draw up an economic reconstruction plan together.
= the European Recovery Program or Marshall Plan (1948)
o Everything starts here with the Americans who are going to help the Europeans, and after a while
these "training wheels" are removed
Security cooperation without becoming one => started among Europeans: after the end of the Second World
War, all European countries asked themselves: what are we going to do now?
o France and the UK are bound by the Treaty of Dunkirk (1947). A year later (1948), the Benelux
countries joined that arrangement at the Treaty of Brussels, establishing an organization that
eventually came to be known as the Western European Union.
At that time: the SU had expanded and sent its armies directly to Germany, which was part
of the war effort, but these Soviet armies did not return after the end of the war => in the
late 1940s it was the Western Europeans who Americans demanded and asked to stay
involved (not to abandon them) => that's how the Washington Treaty came into being in
1949 (NATO and art 5: if you attack 1 NATO member, you attack them all). There are about
the same members in NATO as in the EU
o Everything starts here without the Americans, but with insecure European countries that the
Americans are withdrawing. They ask not to be abandoned
European recovery Programme (Europese Herstel programma)
George Kennan's 1946 Long Telegram from the US Embassy in Moscow
o Kennan warned political leaders in Washington: Europe is being rebuilt, it is the responsibility of the
US to do something about it, because if the US does nothing then the Russians will interfere. In 1946,
the succession from President Roosevelt to President Truman was still in its infancy, the US had its
own internal debate (back to isolation or stay involved)
o Kennan's lengthy telegram pleaded for continued US involvement in Europe and also made it clear
that if the relationship between the US and the Soviet Union (the major powers) deteriorates,
Europe will be the theater where this competition will take place
European Recovery Program as an attempt to outbid Soviet competition
o Foundation for what became the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
Moscow was concerned about Washington's intentions, and in the countries where Soviet military influence
was present, none of these European countries signed up for Marshall Aid. Marshall Aid was limited to the
western part of the European continent and you can see that the Iron Curtain has been raised.
, On coal and steel
The Marshall Plan works: economic reconstruction is a success story and that leads to new thinking. Jean
Monnet advises the French Foreign Minister Schuman to make this bold proposal to capture what had set in
motion the Marshall Plan and to integrate key materials of industrial development (coal and steel). The same
materials essential to sustaining and sustaining wartime economies. If you integrate the management of the
coal and steel industry into a European framework, you make a military conflict between France and
Germany materially impossible
o The European Coal and Steel Community, building on the Paris Treaty, will become a kind of
prototype organization of the EU. A prototype in the sense that it goes a bit further than the
Marshall Plan => it is not a temporary plan for economic reconstruction but building on the ideas of
Jean Monnet, it institutionalizes the idea of European cooperation that was already part of the
Marshall Plan
o Institutions of the European Coal and Steel Community (codified in the Paris Treaty of 1951) =>
institutions are now more or less the same
High authority supranational powers (now: European Commission)
Council of Ministers harmonization role (now: Council of the European Union)
Common Assembly advisory role, democratic voice (now: European Parliament)
Court of Justice Legal Arbitration
From the Speech Report (1956)
Spaak was commissioned to come up with a report to take this experiment a step further. Spaak advocated
the idea of expanding the coal and steel community to other dimensions of economic management, in
particular the creation of a common market for continuing Europe's economic reconstruction
o The Spaak report provided the impetus for what became the Treaty of Rome. This is the basic Treaty
of the European Union today (Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union)
The 6 founding states of the coal and steel community are trying to reorganize their
economies as one common market. To make economic exchange easier and create more
goodwill among the people of those states
The Treaty of Rome created the European Economic Community, replacing the Coal and Steel Community
o Institutions
Commission
Council of Ministers
Assembly
Court of Justice
o Common Market Principles
Tariff removal free trade area (no charge if you send something from one EEC country to
another)
Common External Tariff Trade Policy
Competition rules leveling the playing field
Promotion of free movement goods, persons, services, capital
Result: National governments no longer had full control over what economic policies would look like and
that created this first major clash over how European integration => importance of national sovereignty?
o In France, Charles De Gaulle had become the president of . He was not happy with the idea that you
would have a supernational institution that could ignore the policy preferences of the national
capitals => he had sent his ambassador to Brussels with strict instructions to disagree with anything
that could limit national freedom
Solution: a gentlemen's agreement => the Luxembourg compromises: building on the idea that if a Member
State believes that it has major national interests at stake, that it feels extremely threatened by European
decision-making, then it can raise a red flag and then have to decision-making is taken by consensus
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