POLH1019: European Integration History, 19451995

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POLH1019European Integration History, 1945-1995
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7 sessions 1Active participation and essay

• The calendar of the course
• At 14.15, in Publicum 3
• On the following days
• 8.9.
• 15.9
• 22.9
• 29.9
• 6.10
• 13.10
• 20.10
• 1.12
• The last session will be used as a conclusive
  session and a feedback session for essays

• Active participation
• Session participation is obligatory and a roll of
  students will be written upon attendance to the
  first session. This list will be checked during
  each session of the course, and each student will
  be allowed to miss a maximum of 2 sessions. If
  the student is absent for more than 2 sessions of
  the course, and does not provide the teacher
  responsible for the course with a valid reason
  for their absence, they will not be awarded
  credits for the course.
• An essay on the subject of the course
• DEADLINE! November 23rd
• Essay instructions on the webpage of the
  Contemporary History Department

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What the ?_at_ is he talking about?

• . Dinan, Desmond, Europe Recast A History of
  European Union (London, Palgrave, 2001)
• . Dinan, Desmond (ed.), Origins and Evolution of
  the European Union (The New European Union
  Series, Oxford University Press, 2006)
• . Questions? loucle_at_utu.fi

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Before we even start

• As themes, European or Atlantic community are
  not mundane. They should serve as the final goal
  of a long-term effort, the sense of a life, the
  objective of a generation(Raymond Aron, 1952)
• Europe as a philosophical, personal attachment, a
  gut-feeling
• The result of a personal story between states, of
  a critical distance towards national identity
• Historical research to make sense of it, and
  honestly ponder how it developed, and maybe where
  it is going

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Studying European integrations history

• The Schuman roundabout, in Brusells
• What is the European Union?
• How did this strange entity come about?
• Importance of studying the historical process
  that brought the European Union into being
• In the 1950s, the treaties of Paris (1951) and
  Rome (1957) organized the surrendering by some
  European states of parts of their sovereignty
• A strange process
• the voluntary surrendering by European states of
  parts of their sovereignty
• the affirmation of the rule of law
• a democratic process
• the continuous role of the states as the heart of
  this system
• yet the construction and stranegthening of a new
  level of politics

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Studying European integrations history

• Especially important in 2008
• Period of obvious changes in the way the EU works
• The saga of constitutional reform from the
  treaty of Rome II in 2004, to Lisbon in 2007 and
  the Irish referendum in 2008
• The contours of the EU
• Public opinions in the European integration
  process the process started from the elites
  (Raymond Aron, 1947 Let us not hide from the
  truth. The idea of European unity is first of all
  a conception for reasonable men, it is not
  primarily a popular feeling).
• Is it still possible to think that way? Did the
  soft consensus end?
• Did the historical process that started European
  integration in the 1950s come to an end with the
  Cold War?
• Jacques Attali (Le Monde, January 2007) thinks
  so the end of the Cold War has stopped the fears
  that worked as a first incentive in the 1950s
  fear of the Soviet Union, fear of poverty, fear
  of German power, fear of Franco-British
  incapacity to counter German or Soviet danger)
• If so, what next? Can understand the nature of
  the process help preview its future?

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Questions of vocabulary

• No definition of Europe here
• Europe will be for our purpose the states
  involved in the various post-1945 European
  integration projects. I will not try to define
  the borders of Europe or a European culture
• Difference between Europeist projects, European
  construction and European integration
• Europeist projects as ideas, projects aiming at
  cooperation between European states
• European construction means all projects of
  cooperation between European states
• while European integration means a precise type
  of cooperation, started in the 1950s with the
  European communities, and characterized by the
  creation of supranational institutions to which
  member-states surround parts of their sovereignty
  (Jean Bodin, the absolute and perpetual power)
• A voluntary process, based on the rule of law as
  such, an unprecedented process in Europe.
• Federation, confederation, Europe of the states,
  supranationality, intergovernmental cooperation

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Goals of the course

• Describe
• European construction and integration from the
  end of World War II in 1945 to the enlargment of
  the Union in 1995 (accession of Sweden, Finland,
  Austria)
• Chronological description
• Explain
• Question the nature of the process, the forces at
  play, expose to you contending interpretations
  about the process, the incentives

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Basic assumptions

• Contending interpretations on the reason for this
  process
• Classical, state-driven policy? Idealism?
• Jean Monnet as a European thinker, or as a French
  diplomat?
• The European communities as a product of
  classical state policy, the states as the main
  actors
• Alan Milward demystifying European integration
  An arm of the nation-states to do things that
  could not otherwise be achieved
• The European Rescue of the Nation-state
• The foreign policies of European democratic
  states as the main vehicles of European
  integration a sobered, realist vision of
  European integration (see the needs, see the
  limitations)
• Supranational forces as complements to state
  policy
• Hans-Peter Schwarz One has to search the
  various forces at work behind the process of
  European integration on both levels
  transnational forces, ideasand contacts above
  the nation-states, and policies and aspirations
  at the national level

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Session 1 The idea of Europe and European
projects before 1945

• European integration starts in the 1950s
• Yet before that one can find intellectual and
  concrete roots to the project
• Debate over Europe
• Integration project on the continent
• Europeist or European projects

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Europe, ????p?

• Idea of Europe is older than the 20th century
• What is Europe?
• European cultural and historical hieritage is
  difficult to define Christianity? A geographical
  area? Western European democratic countries?
• A crossroad
• The feeling of a common ground, between certain
  ways of life, the Greek and Roman intellectual,
  legislative and religious heritage, Christianity,
  and various political attempts at integrating the
  continent
• Charlemagne creates the Holy Roman Empire in 800

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Europe?

• Links to the question of the nature of Europe
  Europe as an heritage? Europe as a project? One
  conception is deemed more open than the other,
  and the EU evokes more the project than the
  heritage
• Problem of the very existence of something one
  could name Europe borders? Cultural
  definition? Problem of the enlargment
• The European Union projects an image of itself as
  a non-cultural, non-geographical project. An
  unwillingness to define itself officially in
  these areas. The debates on the Constitution, on
  the enlargment, on Turkeys accession have shown
  how much resistence does this conception meet
• European integration as a a-historical project?
  History as a sin?
• Problem has come back during the debate on the
  Constitution Poland for example wanted to
  emphasize in the introduction a mention to the
  European Christian heritage
• Final mention is to the humanist and cultural
  heritage of Europe
• Debate on that is a thorn in the European
  integration projects side
• At the same time, some political groupings have
  during the process emphasized the idea that there
  is something in common, that European states
  divide artificially something that should be
  whole
• Western European Christian Democrat forces are
  traditional partisans of European integration,
  out of the conception of a cultural, common
  heritage Christianity

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Europe imagined, 18th century

• Thinkers started in the 18th century to link the
  idea of a unity of free peoples, freedom,
  democracy, and peace
• Immanuel Kant
• 1795, Philosophical Project for Perpetual Peace
  -gt to achieve peace through a "federation of free
  states" in Europe
• The Enlightenment
• Rousseau Jugement sur la paix perpétuelle, 1782
  -gt a federation/confederation of Princes
• Equation free peoples, peace, unification
• Problem of this not especially European,
  potentially all Humanity
• After 1945, French socialist projects have the
  same problem

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Europe imagined, the 19th century

• Henri de Saint-Simon
• De la réorganisation de la société européenne,
  1814
• A best-seller in France
• Lobbies the Congress of Wien for a European
  Confederation
• Absolute failure the Congress imposes a concert
  of nations
• Victor Hugo
• The United States of Europe peace, democracy,
  unification
• Ambiguity of course, the main town is Paris, and
  the language French
• Rethoric of the Enlightenment embodied in a
  French national project
• End of the 19th century, the advocates of
  international law Albert de Lapradelle, Carl
  Triepel
• Construction of a jus gentium binding the states
• The gentle civilizer of nations

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Integration and disintegration, the 19th century

• Along intellectual debates, the 19th century also
  saw concrete attempts at regional integration
• Economic interest
• The Zollverein 1834-1870, in current day
  Germany, dominated by Prussia
• The best-known of several projects of custom
  unions aiming at organizing Europe around
  economic interests
• Force of arms the Napoleonic project
• Nationalism!
• Germany in 1871, Italy Nationalism as a
  unifying, liberating ideal often connected to
  the idea of freeing the peoples from autocratic,
  multi-ethnic empires
• For many 19th century thinkers, there is a link
  between nationalism, the unification of free
  peoples, freedom, the rule of law
• Ernest Renan defines the nation in 1882, but says
  also that the nations are not eternal. They
  begun and they will end. The European
  confederation, probably, will take their place
• But the nation-states have proved more solid than
  that they have come to stand in the way of the
  European unification dream, as the main social,
  intellectual, cultural, economic, political
  horizon of the peoples.
• The fight against that begins already in the 19th
  century
• Example Joseph Proudhon Du Principe fédératif,
  1863
• The old federalist tradition comes from that

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1900 Europe of the states?

• The 19th cenury projects of European
  unification
• Federation or confederation of free states, free
  peoples delivered of the shackles of autocracy
• Alliance of Reason, freedom, nationalism,
  enduring peace
• Ambiguous, divided, and failing to concretize
• The 20th century starts with a Europe divided
  into nation-states
• The states as the main units of political,
  symbolic, economic, social allegiances
• Also, for many such as France, the states as the
  main vehicle of democratization in Europe
• Thus, for example, leftist nationalism in France

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World War I

• A European Civil War?
• 1918-1919 reconstructing after the Der des der
• European projects come back to the surface
• Intellectual projects Count Coudenhove-Kalergis
  PanEurope
• Economic and financial projects
• Aristide Briands European federal link,
  1929-1932

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Paneurope and intellectual projects

• Paneurope the most significant effort at
  promoting European unification in the 1920s
• An intellectual project, a lobby
• The Austrian political writer and journalist
  Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi
• 1922 Article in a newspaper, Wien
• 1923 Paneurope
• The necessity of unity, especially of
  Franco-German cooperation in order to avoid war
• The idea of a spiritual heritage, an ambiguous
  vocabulary (confederation? Europe of the states?)
• A lobby group, scattered around Europe France,
  Germany mostly
• A movement for the elite, in a window of
  opportunity the 1920s, collective security
• Julien Bendas Discours à la nation européenne,
  1933
• Europe as the victory of reason against the evil
  of national particularisms
• Again France as the center
• The group Europa Union, in 1934 in Switzerland
  anti-fascism, federalism
• The Christian-Democrats around European
  spiritual heritage

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Economic, financial, industrial projects

• Projects aiming at organizing economic and
  industrial cooperation between France and Germany
• Coal and steel, already
• The initiative often comes from private actors
  the International Steel Cartel between French,
  German, Belgian and Luxemburgian industrialists,
  1926
• The French civil servant Louis Loucheur is also
  an advocate of such cooperations between France
  and Germany the Loucheur cooperation project in
  1927
• Custom unions
• The Oslo group, 1932 neutral countries with an
  agenda of lowering customs
• The Anschluss between Germany and Austria an
  other sort of project
• Economic and financial efforts for a reduction in
  custom tariffs
• Francois Delaisi and his European projects
• Integrating economically Western European
  countries
• These projects largely fail with the economic
  crisis in 1929-1933
• 1933 the economic conference of London cannot
  reach a compromise on customs in Europe doom of
  such projects and of unifying economic or
  financial projects

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Briands memorandum, 1929-1930

• The specificity of the 1920s
• Locarno 1925 collective security as a test, and
  uneasy yet pacific relation after a period of
  Franco-German hostility around the Versailles
  treaty, 1919
• The League of Nations a forum, especially for
  European countries, where ideas are discussed
• Better economic conditions due in part to
  American investments in Europe
• Two partners
• Gustav Stresemann revising the consequences of
  Versailles
• Aristide Briand from strong-arm policy toward
  Germany to collective securrity the idea of
  French impotence (Briand in Washington 1922 to
  negotiate a naval treaty, discovers American
  power and the necessity to organize relations
  with Germany) fear that Germany would turn to
  Soviet Russia (Rapallo meeting between Soviet and
  German leaders had frightened the French)
• Also, on Briands part, the will to strike
  opinions Briand the consumate politician
• One of the most spectacular and symbolic attempts
  related to European unification
• September 1929 Briands declaration at the
  League, followed by a memorandum to European
  countries in May 1930 creation of a European
  federal link
• An ambiguous project, that raises fear and
  doubtson both sides
• Stresemann dies in October 1929, Manchuria in
  1930-1932, economic crisis in 1929, accession of
  Hitler in power in January 1933
• Political and economic tension kill the project

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1939-1940 European unification?

• Basic dilemmas are set way before World War II
• The preeminence of the nation-state, and the lack
  of confidence or of a vision of mutual interests
  strong enough to force cooperation
• The geographical limits of projects are unclear
• The ambiguity between a European utopia and the
  realities of economic and political tensions
• In the chaos of 1940, a surprising integration
  project
• June 10th, 1940 French government leaves Paris.
  Jean Monnet is at the head of the Franco-British
  supply committee in London. He proposed (13-14)
  to Churchill, who endorsed it, a project of
  Franco-British union.
• The project is forgotten when France is occupied
• An ad hoc project, linked with the circunstances
  of the war