BACKGROUND TO EUROPEAN INTEGRATION
When we look at the background of the European union integration process. The start of the process
is normally situated after the end of the first second world war. However, a pan European
movement started to develop before the second world war in the 1920s. Its members were
intellectuals and politicians (e.g. Konrad Adenauer who became the Chancellor of West German after
WWII). It was more than just a movement, for example, in 1930 proposals were submitted to the
League of Nations who was predecessors of the united nations. The report was submitted by the
then French minister Brian, thus the Brian Plan. As a result, the League of Nations put up a
committee of enquiry of the European federal union. The proposed plan was that those European
states will work politically together very closely, however, this cooperation will not affect the
sovereignty of the national states involved. Therefore, although the term federal is used in the sense
here, it is the misleading because in the Brian it refers to the cooperation, but it does not envisage
the creation of a Federal European Union. Even back then the issue of nationalism was an important
one, for example, if we look at the debates surrounding Brexit, some of the issues listed there are
related to the issue that the EU eroded UK national sovereignty. The idea that European state should
work together was proposed by the Italian federalist. One of the most important members of the
movement is Spinelli. However, two other approaches were to make western European union states
work together post WWII but here the western states fell into two camps: 1) States that advocated
intergovernmental cooperation and on the other hand states that advocated European integration,
Close Intergovernmental Cooperation
This model was the one favoured by the states concerned with the issue of national
sovereignty. Moreover, this model compared with the integration one is that the former
one preserves the national sovereignty of the states because the states here are keeping all
their powers and not sharing with other common institutions but what they are doing Is that
they will work closely together so, this resulted in the formation of the Creation of the
European Free Trade Area (EFTA) IN 1960. The UK was one of the family members of EFTA
(together with Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland) and then the
UK left EFTA to join the EEC (European Economic Community).
European integration
• In contrast with close intergovernmental cooperation and is the innovative model
and it explains why the EU is unique in the world. So, there were certain European
states that considering the situation of Europe after the second world war,
intergovernmental consideration was not enough to resurrect the EU after the
second world war, something else was needed to reawaken EU states. Founding
members: France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherland and Luxembourg.
The .states took the view that to achieve integration the states must transfer its
competences to common institutions. Thus, integration between the states can be
achieved because they are transferring some of their powers to common
institutions. It is worth noting that when we talk about transfer of competencies it
doesn’t mean that the issue of national sovereignty basically disappears, it does have
an impact on the issue of national sovereignty , but the states agree to the transfer
of power, so is not imposed on them. If we look closely at the powers that the
member states have transferred to the EU institutions, most of the powers are
,shared powers. This means in the areas where the EU has shared powers both the
EU and member state can legislate, so, they are only very few areas where the EU
institutions has exclusive competence. It is also important to note that when talking
about the EU institution the citizens of the members state form part of this EU
institutions, for example, the EU Parliament represents the citizens of all the EU
member states and its one of the main legislative body. The other main legislative
body is the Council and it comprised of ministers of each EU member states. Look at
the situation of the UK after the second world war, the prime minister then was
Churchill, one of the most famous advocates of European Integration. Furthermore,
the first step to European integration is the creation of European Coal and Steel
Community (ECSC) which came out as a result of the treat of Paris of 1951 and its
members were France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherland and Luxembourg.
The market of ECSC was based on the principle of free movement of coal and steel
which were very valuable resources in 1950s. free movement means that they
cannot be no bias in imports and exports of steel and coal between the ECSC
member states, for example, if were to import coal from Germany, France could not
impose custom duties on German importers, so custom duties were prohibited
because they make import and export more expensive. The treaty of Paris expired in
2002 but we will see that when it comes to discuss about the principle of free
movement of goods, the same principle underpinning the ESCS applies. We have a
common market, so there are no custom duties, therefore there can be no
restrictions on import and export of goods between the member states, so free
movement of goods has the principle underpinning ESCS but on a larger scale. The
whole process of the European Integration has been shaped by a series of theories.
The first one was functionalism.
Premise of functionalism
The main objective of functionalism was to rebuild those western states politically,
economically and socially and to avoid a further conflict not negatively, but positively
by having states engaging together in cooperative ventures. The idea is that if we get
the state, for example, to gather all their resources together and cooperate, that will
avoid disputes in a positive way. This will also ensure economic prosperity and
political stability in those states. Functionalism is the idea that states work together,
and they create a common market in coal and steel and create common institutions,
the latter ones are the institutions that will manage the market in question. But
these institutions in order to manage the market they need powers and these
competencies come from the states that are members of the ESCS. This point is very
important when we talk about the European Integration because we need powers to
be transferred from the member states to the European common institutions, which
will be populated by rational technocrats away from whims of political ideology.
European integration was particularly very important politically, for example, when
we look at the dynamic between France and Germany, the former was very keen for
, Germany to join in, not because at that time Germany and France were in good
relation , but basically if both of them are party to ESCS Germany and France will be
able to keep an eye on each other on the import and export of coal and steel, so,
they were the main promoters of the ESCS.
THE EUROPEAN DEFENCE COMMUNITY: THE COMMUNITY THAT NEVER WAS.
Since the ESCS was regarded as a success, thus, another proposal followed it soon which
had the aim of creating a European Defence Community based on the principle of
functionalism. The ESCS was concerned with coal and steel while the EDC was concerned
with the defence. The proposal for the EDC was instigated by the then France prime
minister, Pleven, the project was not only about creating a European Army, but it went as
far as redrafting other treaties, particularly the treaty of the European defence community
which was signed by the same six ESCS states. The UK did not take part in the drafting of the
treaty; its preferred forum for co-operation in the field of security was NATO (North Atlantic
Treaty Organisation, Treaty signed in 1949).
However, for any European treaty to come into force it must be ratified by every single
member state, so, it’s enough for one-member state to decline and the treaty will not be
able to come into force. For this reason, the EC never existed because the French parliament
refused to ratify it. Now, sometimes the EU gets involved in issues regarding defence and
foreign policy, but this are all intergovernmental matters. Even though the EDC was not
successful, the European integration did not stop, it carried on.
The European Economic Community and Euratom
the next step for the creation of the European integration the ESCS member states decided
to implement other treaties which included The Treaty Establishing the European Economic
Community (EEC) - Treaty of Rome; and The Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy
Community (EURATOM) signed in Rome on 25th march. The latter will be addressed in the
Brexit debates because is entirely ratified in the EU.
The European Economic Community (EEC)
When we look at the treaty establishing the EEC, the main concern of the participating
members was economic integration, the main objective, however , it very important to note
that EEC treaty was never only about economic integration, of course, it was necessary for
the implementation of the European integration but it was not the only ultimate goal. This
notion is exemplified in the preamble to the treaty of Rome which says: “Determined to lay
the foundations of an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe “. This particular
sentence in the treaty, was even mention when the then prime minister David Cameron was
trying to negotiate a better deal that will suit the UK, so he requested that this sentence
should be removed so that UK will not be part of political union of Europe. The Treaty
Establishing the European Economic Community created a common market based on the
principle of free movement; the Treaty provided for:
Free movement of goods;
, Free movement of workers;
Freedom of establishment and to provide services come together because they are
concerned with self-employment, so you are dealing with persons and companies
that are exercising with economic activities but are doing so on a self-employed
basis; and
Free movement of capital.
This is during the negotiations for Brexit the EU argues that the UK cannot break these four
freedoms because they are interrelated. In addition, they are also common policies created
by the treaty like common agricultural policy, common competition policy. The 6 member
states that created the EEC agreed to transfer their powers to the EEC common institutions,
so that they can regulate the common market, and they did so by adopting legislation on
the free movement of goods.
Theories underpinning the EEC
While neo-functionalism has been and remains central to the development of European
integration, but the difference between neo-functionalism and functionalism is that the
former is more ambitious while the latter preferred to remain aligned only within the
economic resources (e.g ESCS) . Neo-functionalism covers more and more sectors of the
economy, is a process called spill over. Since the neo-functionalism aim to a larger picture,
they stated that the member states of the EEC will have to transfer more powers to the EU
common institutions, because they see the latter as the primary drivers of European
integration, so for the functionalist and the neo-functionalist if you want to progress to
European integration you need to rely on the work of the common institutions, which vice
versa needs power from the member state to carry out the adequate functions.
1965 creation of a single institutional framework for the three communities (ECSC;
EEC and EURATOM).
This single institutional framework consisted of the European Parliament, the Council, the
Commission and the Court of Justice.
The ‘Luxembourg Accords’:
July 1965-January 1966: France’s ‘empty chair policy’ => France refused to meet with the
other Member states. The French President, De Gaulle, strongly opposed a proposal on the
financing of the common agricultural policy.
An agreement was reached in January 1966 known as ‘the Luxembourg Accords’ => Where
‘issues of vital national importance’ are at stake, Member States can retain a veto and
therefore require unanimity for the adoption of legislation on these matters.
