Signing the Treaty of Paris (ECSC)
On the basis of the Schuman Declaration was created the first of the European Communities: the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). It was a very modest Community with fairly limited goals. The 6 member states: France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg gave up their sovereignty on a specific point: the extraction of coal and iron and the production of steel. That was it. You might say: no big deal. And you are right. What you overlook is that the really important point was not the objective but the “form” of this first European Community.
The ECSC Europe (1951)
This first European Community was essential because it heralded the three basic institutions of the European integration process: an executive power, the High Authority - today the Commission – with sovereign powers which was responsible to an assembly (the current European Parliament) and whose decisions were monitored a posteriori by a European Court of Justice (today the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg).
The ECSC was created for a period of 50 years, and this why it was dissolved on 23 July 2002, but not before playing an essential and historic role by paving the way for the European communities which succeeded it. For the first time the ECSC implemented the “Community Method,” aimed at supranationality by assigning the High Authority power that superseded that of the member states. This is why the constitution of the ECSC was a great blow to the statist camp, in particular the British, as the United Kingdom was excluded from the process.
The integrationist camp was exultant and they decided to move forward. As the World since 1948 was going through the Cold War, the “communitarians” decided that the next European community should be about Defense. Even if NATO had been created in 1949, they considered as a high priority that Communitarian Europe created a common army to face the risk of invasion by Stalin’s Army. This is the origin of the European Defense Community (EDC) based on the Pleven’s Plan, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs. But defense was very much related to national sovereignty, something that the production of Steel was not. And as it happened with the League of Nations, proposed by the US and rejected by the US, the CED created on the initiative of France, was finally nor ratified by the French National Assembly in August 1954 (see page 273 of your materials). Communitarian Europe would not talk about creating a European army again until the Amsterdam Treaty (1999) 45 years later.
Rene Pleven, the architect of EDC
Was the failure of the CED the end of the Communitarian Europe? It was not thanks again to the energy of Jean Monnet, and the efforts of the leaders of the Benelux Countries that pressure Germans, French and Italians to join at the Messina Conference on June 1955 (pages 273-274). The 6 members of the ECSC decided that integration should get back to a less political issue. Two areas were retained. First the production of Atomic energy, that was considered the energy of the future and accordingly justified the creation of an European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC). And second the creation of a Customs union in the line of the Prussian Zollverein, that you already know. This was the origin of idea of creating a Common market in a European Economic Community (EEC). The Messina Conference led directly to the signing of the Treaties of Rome on the 25 of March 1957 (page 274).
The 6 Foreign Affairs Ministers in Messina (1955)
This was the decisive start of Communitarian integration if you consider that the actual Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), consolidated in 2016, is still essentially the Treaty of Rome creating the EEC, the most important treaty of integrated Europe (pages 277-278). A basic step for having France involved was the adoption of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) an extremely controversial issue as you can see on pages 279-281 of your materials.
The signing of the Treaties of Rome (1957)
Signing the treaties was one thing, and another one to implement them (pages 278-279). The problem was that one of the two pillars of integrated Europe had a major political turmoil in 1958, when General Charles De Gaulle took power and founded the 5th Republic in October 1958. And though he was not entirely against the idea of European Integration he was more in favour of preserving French sovereignty. He will remain in power for more than 10 years and this period would clearly slow down the Integration process.
The problem was the rejection by the French government of the qualified majority voting principle, and the return to the unanimity voting. Something that was accepted at the Luxembourg Compromise (30 January 1966) after a period of “Empty chair” policy in which France did not attend European meetings (page 276 and 283). This would not prevent the Communitarian Europe to move forward in some aspects as the Creation of the Court of Justice of the European Communities in Luxembourg (7 October 1958), the transformation of the European Parliamentary Assembly in the actual European Parliament (30 March 1962) (page 275) and the pivotal Executive Merger Treaty (1 July 1967) that enabled to fuse the three executives of the three existing European Communities in one: the actual Commission (page 274).
Despite this hesitating path the European integration did work, especially concerning the EEC Common Market. And this success made the British jealous and pushed them to create the “European Free Trade Association” (EFTA) through the Stockholm Treaty of 4 January 1960. But I was a total failure and the British Government decided to ask Brussels to join Communitarian Europe (page 275), but with little success because De Gaulle was fiercely opposed to accept the British in integrated Europe. British proposal will only move forward after De Gaulle’s death (9 of November 1970)n (pages 282-283). And looking at the Brexit mess we know now that he was absolutely right as the Brits have never been fair play in the integration during the 47 years they have been in Communitarian Europe.
Países miembros de la EFTA
After De Gaulle left politics the European Integration process moved forward with the first enlargements that brought the European Communities from 6 to 12, with the integration of the UK, Ireland and Denmark (1973), Greece (1981) and Spain and Portugal (1986). (page 276) and a very important move: the direct election of the MEP since 1979, the first step towards the democratization of the Communitarian Europe. Since then every 5 years elections to the European Parliament have been held in 1979, 1984, 1989, 1994, 1999, 2004, 2009, 2014 and 2019. (Page 276)
The European Parliamen, the largest Democratic parliament in the World
On the whole this period that deals with European integration during the Cold War has some achievements and some mistakes (pages 283-284). But on the whole the main goal of getting an effective Common market was put back into the table with the signing of the Single European Act. Entering into force on the 1st of July of 1987. This was going to be the situation of Communitarian Europe on the 9 of November of 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. The Cold war was over by December of 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR. And the European Integration process needed to adapt to the brand new situation created by the end of the Iron curtain. This is what we are going to deal with in Teaching Guide number 12, that will bring us to the present situation of the EU.
Communitarian Europe in 1986
Exercising: After understanding the concepts and answering the questions you will have to get acquainted with the following dates of pages 285-287:
- Treaty of Paris (ECSC)
- Rejection of the EDC
- Messina Conference
- Signature of the Treaties of Rome: EEC and EAEC.
- Creation of EFTA
- Executive Merger Treaty
- Luxembourg Compromise
- First Enlargement of Communitarian Europe : UK, Ireland, Danemark.
- Creation of the European Regional development Fund (ERDF)
- First direct Election to the European Parliament
- Greece joins Communitarian Europe
- Schengen Agreement
- Spain and Portugal join Communitarian Europe
- Single European Act
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