Formed in 1960, this originally comprised Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. These became immediately known as “the Seven,” to distinguish them from “the six” who three years earlier had created the European Economic Community (EEC) via the ROME TREATIES (see EUROPEAN INTEGRATION). The UK was by far the largest partner in EFTA, whose creation was very much driven by British designs. It was envisaged as an alternative to the EEC that would facilitate the abolition of tariffs on industrial products between member states over a seven-year period (see laissez-faire), but without involving any deeper harmonization of economic policies. Though Iceland joined in 1970, EFTA suffered a major reverse three years later when Britain and Denmark resigned to join the European Community. They were followed in 1986 by Portugal. In 1995 Austria and Sweden went the same way, together with Finland which had been an associate member of the Association since 1961 and a full one since 1986. During the 1970s and the 1980s, the individual members of EFTA agreed various bilateral trade agreements with Brussels. This process led to the creation in 1994 of the European Economic Area (EEA), a device that enabled all EFTA countries (other than Switzerland, which chose not to participate) to engage in the European single market without directly joining the European Union. By the early twenty-first century, membership of EFTA comprised only Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein (which had enrolled in 1991). In the first of these cases, the particularly disastrous effects of the international financial crisis that began in the autumn of 2008 produced strong pressures favoring transfer into the European Union - a possibility that clearly threatened EFTA’s effective survival.
European integration Ongoing process of political and socioeconomic cooperation between governments, originally stimulated in large measure by the conditions prevailing in post-1945 western Europe. Major landmarks in this development include the EUROPEAN COAL AND STEEL COMMUNITY (ECSC, operative from 1952), the ROME TREATIES of 1957, the SINGLE EUROPEAN ACT (operative from 1987), the MAASTRICHT TREATY of 1992, and the AMSTERDAM TREATY of 1997.
Ideas about the creation of some kind of formal European community may be traced back to the seventeenth century when Maximilien de Bethune, Duke of Sully, contemplated a Europe of 15 equal-sized states overseen by a Christian Council. Such notions were clearly fanciful, as are the occasional claims that the CONTINENTAL SYSTEM of NAPOLEON I was a prototype for some pan-European economic union. During the nineteenth century as a whole, the rise of NATIONALISM was hardly conducive to the fulfillment of such ambitions. It was, instead, the destruction brought about by world war i that concentrated minds on some measure of integration. In 1923 Count Coudenhove-Kalergi founded the PanEuropean Union whose ambitious projects were matched by the Association for European Cooperation created in 1926. Three years later BRIAND floated the idea of a European Federal Union. Some limited progress was made on the economic front. In 1919, a European Coal Commission attempted to coordinate production, while France, Belgium, and Britain established a Supreme Economic Council so as to channel aid for reconstruction. In 1931-2, inspired by the nineteenth-century zollverein, Austria and Germany explored the possibility of a customs union that might offset the effects of the great depression [2]. Belgium and Luxemburg ventured similar plans in the Ouchy Convention of July 1932. In the event, the wider economic downturn and the rise of Nazism scotched any progress. hitler did aim, of course, to build his own version of a unified Europe (see new order; mitteleuropa; collaboration). Yet it was one wholly subservient to German interests, and designed to exclude (as he put it) Asiatics, jews, and bolsheviks.
In the aftermath of world war ii Europe’s desperate situation led many to think about the advantages of closer cooperation. There was an obvious need to rebuild shattered economies. Agricultural and industrial production was well below pre-1939 levels; trade was severely dislocated; unemployment was high; and inflation was rampant. There was a further need for governments to coordinate so as to rehouse millions of refugees and displaced persons. On the eastern side of what soon became the cold WAR “Iron Curtain,” stalin set out to tackle such challenges in a dictatorial and coercive manner that entrenched across his Soviet bloc methods contrasting with those available to the liberal democracies of western Europe. Without any guarantee of long-term US commitment, the latter were militarily weak in the face of the hegemony that the soviet union was establishing over eastern Europe. communism also constituted a potential internal enemy, particularly where its popularity had been enhanced by its contribution during wartime to internal resistance organizations. At least there was no challenge from the extreme right which was discredited by its associations with Nazism and the so-called final
SOLUTION.
In this environment pro-integration pressure groups flourished, among them the Union Euro-peene des Federalistes (UEF) and the International Committee of Movements for European Unity (ICMEU). They had a shared experience of resistance to Nazism, a belief in building a New Jerusalem, a faith in federalism, and an indefatigable optimism. Spurred on by churchill’s Zurich speech of September 19, 1946 calling for a “United States of Europe,” though significantly one without direct British participation (see BRITAIN AND EUROPE), federalists were heartened by early steps towards cooperation. On the military front, in 1946 Britain and France signed the DUNKIRK TREATY. This was augmented two years later by the Brussels treaty which helped pave the way for the creation of nato. There was progress too in the economic domain, with the establishment in 1948 of the Benelux customs union and the Organization for European Economic cooperation (see organization for European cooperation AND development) designed to administer the American aid envisaged by the marshall plan. Meanwhile, the council of Europe, inspired by the CONGRESS OF EUROPE, appeared to augur progress in the political and cultural arenas. Some historians have seen the supporters of a quite centralized version of federalism as crucial to the early stages of integration, but this is misleading. Divided over long-term aims, they held little sway over government policy and made poor lobbyists, having limited influence on the key figures such as monnet whose conversion to a strongly integrationist approach arose partly from his reading of the wider international situation.
In that vital broader context of cold War confrontation, the US government believed that western European security rested not solely on the TRUMAN DOCTRINE, but also on closer economic cooperation. Thus Washington revived federalist proposals that it had shelved in the course of the war for fear of alienating Stalin. The expectation was that the UK would take the lead, and its willingness to do so, up to a certain point, was reflected in the Dunkirk and Brussels Treaties and in its exploration of a Western European Customs Union. Yet the latter idea met with opposition lest it might weaken sterling, undermine the city of London, and open the door to deeper political union. In this situation, the initiative fell to France which was keen not just to promote its economic recovery, which was threatened by international competition, but also to protect itself against Germany. To these ends, the French government initially sought the permanent dismemberment of Germany and the creation of a separate autonomous province of the Ruhr - policies first contemplated during the negotiations surrounding the 1919 VERSAILLES TREATY. The creation of the two Germanys in 1949 effectively forced a rethink. Now France believed its interests were best served by the creation of a “little Europe,” based on Franco-German understanding and a pooling of coal and steel production. This idea also had an appeal to West Germany (see federal republic of GERMANY) which was keen to avoid the international ostracism it had suffered after the World War i when it was initially refused entry to the LEAGUE OF NATIONS. The project also appealed to the new Benelux trio and to Italy, all of whom understood that Franco-German cooperation was axiomatic to their own economic and political well-being.
These states, together with France and West Germany, came to form “the six.” During 1951, following proposals from French foreign minister schuman, they agreed to create the ECSC. The irony was that in attempting to protect national security France momentarily put its faith in a supranational institution. in the event, the ECSC itself promoted only a limited form of so-called “sectoral” integration. The vexed question of German rearmament illustrated the limits of French enthusiasm for the European project. Plans for a European Defence Community (EDC) had as their outcome an altogether less ambitious WESTERN EUROPEAN UNION. The failure of EDC led many to think that further cooperation was finished, as did the collapse of a related scheme for a European Political Community (EPC) and the unwillingness of Britain to join the ECSC. However, closer integration offered to West Germany and France prospects of economic benefit that were too great to resist. In 1955 the messina CONFERENCE paved the way for the Rome Treaties two years later. Strongly influenced by the thinking of the Belgian SPAAK, these agreements gave birth not simply to EURATOM but, more importantly, to the European Economic Community (EEC) which was to oversee the gradual implementation of a Common Market.
Those two bodies, together with the ECSC, would become known collectively first as the European Community (EC), following a “merger treaty” operative from 1967, and then from the time ofthe Maastricht agreement as the European Union (EU). The Rome Treaties provided them with a bureaucratic infrastructure largely copied from the original ECSC model. This comprised four main elements. The Brussels-based European Commission, manned by technocrats and fronted by commissioners, was a supranational body charged with initiating policy in the Community’s interest. Often described as the “engine room” of integration, it often found itself at loggerheads with the European Council of Ministers formed by government representatives from the Six who were each sensitive to national interests. There was additionally a European parliament, based at Strasbourg, initially made up of representatives selected by the various national parliamentary assemblies. Though its budgetary, consultative, and debating powers grew larger, it had little direct control over either the Commission or the Council. The final body was the European Court of Justice (see European court [1]) whose remit related to technical legal issues arising out of the interpretation of the Rome Treaties.
These institutions have expanded and deepened their functions over time (see also acquis communautaire) in a way that has led many political scientists to postulate some essentially irresistible momentum. The experience of the 1960s - and especially the failure of Britain’s belated bid for EC membership - suggests that matters were not so simple. Wary of entangling itself in any project which might lead to loss of national sovereignty, the UK had hoped that the EUROPEAN FREE TRADE ASSOCIATION (EFTA) and the Commonwealth would reinvigorate its sluggish economic performance. Its leaders eventually realized that neither could supply the same tonic as the EC. However, the first British attempt to join the Community was thwarted in 1963 by de GAULLE. In his view, the UK was little more than the cat’s-paw of the USA, and he placed greater reliance on cementing improved relations with West Germany (e. g. via the Franco-German Friendship Treaty of 1963). De Gaulle further feared that Britain’s historic commitment to free trade (see laissez-faire) would undermine French protectionist concerns, especially in the farming domain. His preference, initially outlined in the so-called Fouchet Plan of 1961, was for a Europe des patries, a loose confederal community based on limited intergovernmental cooperation and minimal erosion of national sovereignty. Such preferences were demonstrated in 1965 during the so-called “empty chair crisis” when France rejected generous rural subsidies, paid through the COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY, in order to oppose a strengthening of both the European Commission and the Parliament. In the resulting LUXEMBURG COMPROMISE of 1966 moves towards qualified majority of voting were set aside so that each member state could effectively veto key decisions.
With de Gaulle’s resignation in 1969, the EC project appeared set for reinvigoration. Britain, Ireland, and Denmark joined in 1973, and Greece in 1981. Through the Lome Convention (1975), the EC responded to accusations of insularity by removing the duties on imports from various African and Caribbean countries, nearly all of which were former colonies. The first direct elections to the European parliament occurred in 1979. That was also the year when President GISCARD D’ESTAING of France pioneered the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) as part of the European Monetary System (EMS), so as to prepare the way for a single currency (see economic AND MONETARY UNION). Britain, however decided to remain outside the ERM; and, though it did eventually join in 1990, it made a panic-stricken exit two years later. The UK’s continuing ambivalence towards Europe had already become increasingly plain during the previous decade or so of THATCHER’s administration. In 1984, for example, she had expended considerable energy in reducing Britain’s budgetary contributions. She thereby reflected a wider disillusionment with the EC. In the eyes of Eurosceptics it lacked transparency, while many Europhiles feared that the Community was losing sight of its original ideals and reverting to protectionism.
The talk in the early 1980s was thus of “Eurosclerosis.” Stagnation was eventually overcome by a wider realization that the EC was being increasingly challenged by Japan and other Asian economies. There was also a growing awareness that the model of welfarism adopted by western European states in the 1960s had not been able to address the problems of the 1970s - high unemployment, inflation, and government debt. The unsuccessful attempts by Mitterrand to pursue Keynesian economics (see keynes) at the start of his presidency nearly forced France out of the EMS, and thus reinforced those perceptions. In the event, it was delors (French head of the European Commission, 1985-95), closely backed by Mitterrand and the German chancellor kohl, who found the way forward. Delors oversaw further increase of EC/EU membership, with Portugal and Spain joining in 1986, followed by Austria, Finland, and Sweden in 1995. As well as steering through the single European act and preparing enlargement of the schengen agreement, Delors oversaw the Maastricht Treaty, the need for which had become all the more urgent after the further territorial extension connected with the german reunification of 1990.
This event, accompanied by the broader collapse ofcommunism, augured the enlargement of the Community eastwards. The major implications of that growth were addressed in the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty. In 2004 Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania all joined the EU, and were then followed by Bulgaria and Romania three years later. Such expansion clearly necessitated further institutional reform. one aspect was covered by the Treaty of Nice (2001, effective from 2004), which recalibrated the voting strength of each member state. Another was confronted through the European Constitution Treaty (TCE) of 2004, which sought to codify previous agreements and to streamline decision-making procedures. Having been agreed by the representatives of the 25 member states, this lengthy and complex document needed to be ratified by all the countries of the EU. Most did so through votes in parliament, yet elsewhere the project was put to a referendum. When in 2005 such plebiscites in France and the Netherlands overwhelmingly rejected the proposals, the whole confirmation process ground to a halt. In December 2007 the Treaty of Lisbon incorporated a number of concessions offered in response to the critics of the TCE, including greater reliance on qualified majority voting and a strengthening of the position of the European parliament. Yet this “reform treaty” too faced difficulties during a ratification process that now involved 27 countries (see Map 12). Obstacles included anxieties about the development of a revised form of “presidency” (but more accurately, chairmanship) of the European Council of Ministers, as well as about a post of “High Representative” that might seem to diminish the status of existing foreign ministers. The Lisbon accord was eventually ratified in November 2009, after especially stubborn resistance from the president of the Czech Republic and the holding of a second Irish referendum that cancelled the negative outcome previously registered in June 2008.
Even if the more demanding constitution of 2004 had been approved, it would not have created the supranational United States of Europe which its opponents feared. The strongly centralizing federalist ambitions of the 1950s remained very imperfectly realized. Progress in European integration had largely been in the economic and commercial spheres, and it had generally been national self-interest that prompted such cooperation. The post-Yugoslav wars in the Balkans revealed the shortcomings of European integration in the military domain. Though there was now talk of incorporating all the states of that region into the EU (with Croatia and Macedonia being the two leading candidates for earliest further entry), the most recent enlargements had generally brought fragmentation, not closer cohesion. At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century there also remained major dilemmas associated with the suggested future involvement of Turkey in particular (see turkey AND EUROPE). There were growing problems with the common “euro” currency adopted by a majority of EU members, and, even more generally, there remained a widespread belief that the institutions ofthe Union lacked proper accountability. Under those circumstances it was easy to underestimate the achievements of integration, which included not only the opening during the 1950s of an era of unprecedented stability in of Franco-German relations but also, more recently, the EU’s contribution towards consolidating new liberal democracies in countries previously under communist rule.
World History
