THE ORIGINS OF COMMUNITARIAN EUROPE (Teaching Guides 10 and 11)

 

                                                      Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman 

                                          

    

The failure of the Congress of The Hague seemed to end any hope about creating an integrated Europe. But a new Europe was on its way when the Western allies, as a reaction against the rising of the “Iron curtain,” enabled Germany to create in 1949 an independent State, the German Federal Republic, followed 5 months later by the creation of the German Democratic Republic.  Without Germany any initiative towards European integration was unthinkable.

On top of that European politicians did not pay any attention to a singular personality: Jean Monnet (1888-1979) who was essentially a pragmatic business man that had an essential role in World politics since World War 1, not only in Europe but the US, as part of the Think Tank of President F. D. Roosevelt. He was essential for the launching of the Marshall Plan under the Truman Administration.  

Monnet was fully aware that nationalism of the European States made impossible to consider a united supranational Europe. But considering the success of the Marshall Plan, that for economic reasons worked at the supranational level, as it was a collective deal were European States accepted to submit for the purposes or reconstruction to a joint action, he thought that if remaining in the economic field an integration could be tried.

He was lucky to be a good friend of an important French politician, Robert Schuman, and that West Germany had as head of Government a lucid politician, Konrad Adenauer, that was more than willing to have Germany accepted as an equal by the other European Western States, in order to avoid the disaster of the 1919 "Versailles Diktat".

                                                                  Konrad Adenauer

 Monnet and Schuman agreed to launch a very modest first step towards European integration, as it was apparently limited to the joint production of Coal and Steel. But if you read carefully the brief Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950, you will easily discover that the initiative had far more reaching consequences for the six initial member states.

                                                     The Schuman Declaration, 9 May 1950

The Treaty of Paris founding the European Coal and Steel Community was not a constitution. It was a contract, an agreement creating a six member European Community. Each of the signing states had their own constitution, legal system and full independence and sovereignty, with a tiny exception: they lost control on the production of coal, iron and steel that depended on a High Authority that imposed its decisions over the member states. .

                                                  The European Coal and Steel Community

As the Communitarian way had worked, the founding members of the ECSC went for another try. In the beginning of the cold war, with the mighty Stalin Army on its borders, despite of the creation of NATO it made sense to create a European Defense Community. But this was going too far too fast. Today, 71 one years after the creation of the first European Community, the Member States of the EU still do not accept to have an European Army. Despite the fact that every state could not face, for instance, in an open war the US, Russian or Chinese army.

Jean Monet understood that the only possible way of getting together was through economy, and this why at the Messina Conference (June 1955) he came along with the old idea of a Customs Union like the Prussian Zollverein. The result was the European Economic Community created with the European Atomic Energy Community in Rome in March 1957.

 The EEC was a success as proved the fact that the UK tried to counteract it through the creation of the EFTA in 1969. And shortly afterwards the British asked to join the EEC, though they did not count with the fierce opposition of Charles De Gaulle. 

European integration was on its way but it had to slow down because De Gaulle got into power in France. From 1958 to 1969 French nationalism was too strong and could not accept a strong integration as proved the Empty Chair policy (France did not attend the European Summits) and the Luxembourg Compromise and the veto to the entry of the UK in the EEC.

 De Gaulle’s gone finally the European integration had a restart. The UK (with Ireland and Danemark) joined Communitarian Europe in 1973. A European Parliament was democratically elected since 1979. In 1981 Greece joined the Club, and in 1986 Spain and Portugal did so too. In 1985 the Schengen Treaty opened the way to the suppression of common frontiers and in 1986 the Common Market was relaunched through another Treaty: the Single European Act. Three Years later, the Fall of the Berlin Wall opened wide perspectives for a stronger integration. We will see its consequences in Teaching Guide number 12.     

  

                                                                Rome, 25 of March 1957

INSTRUCTIONS: First read the text included in your Materials (pages 260 to 267 FOR Teaching Guide 10 and 273 to 285 for Teaching Guide 11), before proceeding to answer the Concrete Questions, the Concepts and the General Questions.

Concerning the Basic Chronology (pages 268-269 for TG 10 and 286-288 for TG 11) you should get familiar with the following dates:

1949,

 23 May: Creation of the German Federal Republic.

 7 October: Creation of the German Democratic Republic.

 

1950, 9 May: Schuman Declaration

1951: ECSC (Treaty of Paris). Europe of 6.

1952-1954: Failure of the EDC

1955, June: Messina Conference.

1957, 25 March : Treaties of Rome (EEC and EAEC)

1960 : EFTA

1965: Executive Merger Treaty.

1966: Luxembourg Compromise

1973, January 1^st: First Enlargement of Communitarian Europe (UK, Ireland and Denmark). Europe of 9.

1975: Creation of the ERDF (Europe of Regions)

1979: First elections to the European Parliament.

1981. Second Enlargement: Greece joins Communitarian Europe. Europe of 10.

1985: Schengen Agreement

1986, January 1^st: Third Enlargement: Spain and Portugal join an Europe of 12.

1987, 1^st July : Single European Act enters into force amending the EEC.  

 

 

TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION IN CLASS: Should Communitarian Europe remain essentially economic?

Please consider the following aspects:

1.        Review what was the Monnet and Schuman approach in the Schuman Declaration. What was the spirit of it?

2.    Take into consideration the failure of the European Defense Community, proposed initially by France and rejected by the same country.

3.        Consider the De Gaulle’s reaction that led to the Luxembourg Compromise

4.        Which was the political aim of the European Regional Development Fund?

5.       Why was necessary the Single European Act?  

 

                                               Spain sign the treaties for joining Communitarian Europe  (12 June 1985)

THE FEDERAL OPTION

Today we will consider what so far is the most efficient way of integrating different States in a coherent and efficient union: the Federal Union. We will get acquainted with how the model appeared in a concrete historical circumstance in a concrete group of States: the US Confederation. And how since then it has become the best option for integrating states in a durable and operative way.

The 13 American colonies got together for the first time in order to fight a common enemy: the British Crown. This is why they agreed on signing the Articles of Confederation in 1777.  But when they won the war and became 13 different independent States initially they did not wished a stronger union. For ten years every North American State had its onw constitution, its own government and its own Legal System. The only common institution they shared was the Continental Congress. A non permanent Assembly where the 13 States had elective representatives.  They met when they had a problem, and if they decided anything it was extremely difficult to implement the decision as they had not a common budget, nor a common executive for enforce what was agreed. Congress nevertheless was not a good instrument to face crisis, even a small problem like the one that affected the State of Massachusetts in 1786: the Shay Rebellion. 

The anarchy resulting from the rebellion of an angry farmer could not be prevented by the Congress, and finally the wealthy citizens of Massachusetts had to pay from their pocket an army to reduce the rebels. 

George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and most of the other founding fathers of the new nation considered that the 13 Colonies could not survive a major crisis, especially if the British, the French or the Spanish decided  to attack them. So they started a big debate considering the Federalist option, that is creating a super state over the individual states that could be more operative and ensure a greater protection over internal or external dangers.  It was a long and fierce debate as many States did not want to give up their full autonomy. 

Finally they reached a compromise : create a short common constitution, with a strong President elected by the States and a double legislature: one representing the states (Senate) and another one representing the citizens (House of Representatives), and a very strict separation of powers. Everything to ensure that the Federal State could be controlled by the states integrated in it. Finally after the approval of the US Constitution in September 1787, a complex ratification process, that required the approval of the Bill of Rights (that became the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution), the 13 colonies got into the Union and elected as first President George Washington (1789-1797). 

The US Federal State was not however not consolidated. It could have been weakened by the election of the Antifederalist Thomas Jefferson, but fortunately the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, John Marshall (1801-1835) established the supremacy of the constitution over politics. 

                                                                             John Marshall (1801-1835)

The other problem was the expansion of the Union from the 13 initial States to the actual 50 through the legal instrument called the Northwest Ordinance of July 1787. A long process that did not go without tensions, including a devastating Civil War (1861-1865) between the Slave and the Free States. And even today there are tensions between the Republicans that want more power for the States and the Democrats willing to reinforce the Federal power. 

The important point is that despite all the problems the US are a World power because they developed a strong Federal union which is compatible with the autonomy of its member states. This is why many states all over the world have chosen the Federal model and the Presidential System (as Mexico or Russia, for instance). And this why the federal option was greatly considered by some Europeans after the sinking of the European States in the two World Wars that had shaken the Old continent in the first half of the 20th Century. 

Nevertheless bringing the Federal model to Europe has proven to be far more difficult for one reason: European States have been independent for centuries, they do not share the language or similar institutions and they are, especially since the end of the 18th century extremely keen on their sovereignty. After the signing of the Westphalia Treaty, after the French Revolution and all along the 19th century. Only when European States were in ruins in 1918 they started considering that they should get together in order to remain powerful at the world level and face the US and the USSR. 

                                                                    The Franco British Union (June 1940)

But despite some attempts at integration, like the Pan-European Movement of Count Coudenhove Kalergi (1923) or the Briands proposal for a European Union (1929), rising tensions due to strong nationalism led to another European suicide: World War Two. It is interesting however that even between 1939 and 1945 each side tried to reinforce some kind of union to get stronger. We have to mention the short attempt for a Franco-British Union (June 1940), how Hitler tried to create a United Europe under the banner of National-Socialism and how in anti-hitlerian Europe they were different initiatives to develop a way for European integration. The most effective one was the customs and economic union created by Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg: the BENELUX (5 September 1944). 

                                                                                                 Hitlerian Europe

After 1945 followed some years of disarray while the destroyed European States asked Americans for money in total disorder creating a Dollar gap. Until George Marshall in 1947 established a coordinated aid that obliged the needed European States to work together if they wanted American money for reconstruction. 

This period led to the first real attempt of creating an integrated Europe. An attempt that aimed at establishing a Federal Europe in the Congress of the Hague (may 1948). It was a failure but at least it enabled the Foundation of the Council of Europe (1949)with its extremely useful Human Rights Court that from Strasbourg protect Europeans  from their respective States. 

                                                                        The Hague Congress (1948)

Nevertheless in 1949 it seemed impossible that the different European States could try to follow the same path in anything. The World belonged to the Americans and the Russians. 

 

                                                                      Churchill speaking at the Hague Congress

INSTRUCTIONS: First read the text included in your Materials (pages 211 to 252), before proceeding to answer the Concrete Questions, the Concepts and the General Questions. 

Concerning the Basic Chronology (pages 253-254) You should get familiar with all the dates. 

TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION IN CLASS: Would you like a Federal option for Europe? 

Please consider the following aspects: 

1. Understand the essence of the Federal model of State integration. Consider the differences with other models: Empire, Composite monarchies or Confederation.

2. Consider the US Federal approach. Why it appeared. Which were the main difficulties it faced for assuring its consolidation. How work the relationship between the States and the Federal State. 

3. How should European States procede in order to move to a Federal Europe.  

HISTORIC MODELS OF STATE INTEGRATION

 Despite de persistence of the Universal model in the European continent, from 800 to 1945, after 1648 we face a Europe of States. The consequence is the constant quarreling for hegemony for almost 300 years. 

In order to be more powerful kingdoms and states in European history have always tried to expand territorially. One way was war. The other one is the integration of different kingdoms or states into a larger political unit. We will examine today some of them. 

 The oldest model of integration was the Composite monarchy. This occurs when a king becomes simultaneously the monarch of different kingdoms. This does not mean however full unification as in Composite monarchies every member kingdom keep its constitutional status intact. Their own political institutions (Assembly of States) their own law and courts. And also, usually, a customs barrier protection. We will study two actual states that followed the way of the Composite monarchies: Spain and the UK. 

Concerning Spain bear in mind that the Catholic Kings (1474-1504) did not integrate Castile and Aragon. The Crown of Castile was a unified state and the Crown of Aragon a Composite monarchy. Isabel and Fernando did not unify their Spanish domains. And neither did their grandson Carlos I (V). Castile was a consolidated State and the Crown of Aragon was not. This is why in the Catholic Composite Monarchy that was the result of the joining of Castile and Aragon, Castile ended being dominant. And the common language was Castilian.

We have to wait until the Spanish Succession War (1704-1715) and the defeat of Aragon, Valencia, Aragon and Mallorca to have these kingdoms integrated and unified in Castile (Decretos de Nueva Planta).  As Navarre and the Basqs provinces had not rebelled against Philip V, they kept their own separate constitutional and legal frame. At least until the Carlists wars in the 19th century. Then Navarre (1841) and Alava, Guipúzcoa and Vizcaya (1876) got integrated as well in the Spanish State. 

But the tradition of the Composite monarchy did not disappear and Spain is not today a completely unified state as the independentists movements of Catalonia and the Basq country shows. The composite monarchy model is not fully operative in terms of constructing a strong and unified state. 

It is also the case of the UK. England integrated Wales in the 16th century and Scotland in the 17th-18th centuries, forming the United Kingdom with the Union Jack. And Ireland from 1800 to 1922. But the union is not as solid as it appears. Ireland became in the 20th century an independent State (with the exception of Northern Ireland). And after Brexit Scotland and Northern Ireland are looking for an indepent status as most of its citizens are not happy about Brexit. Again the Composite monarchy system does not guarantee a strong unified State. 

 We have another formula of state integration in the case of the Swiss Confederation, that started with the Rutli Oath in 1291 and receive full international recognition in the Peace of Westphalia. Nevertheless in the Confederation the 26 cantons have more power than the federal government in Bern. Even today. A Confederation is therefore a quite weak form of integration.  

 As integrating politically the European states was impossible, in the 19th century some other partial ways of integration appeared. It was the case of the Metternich System based in the Holy Alliance of 1815, that disappeared completely in 1848.  And the practical customs unions of the German States headed by Prussia in the Zolverein created in 1818 and consolidated by 1834. An important precedent of the present European Communitarian system of integration.

INSTRUCTIONS: First read the text included in your Materials (pages 191 to 203), before proceeding to answer the Concrete Questions, the Concepts and the General Questions. 

Concerning the Basic Chronology (pages 205-209) the crucial dates are the following: 

Survival of the Universal Model: 

800, 962, 1804, 1806, 1852-1870, 1871-1918 and 1933-1945. 

Crown of Aragon: 

1137, 1164-1196, 1276, 1283, 1349, 1442, 1474-1504 (Catholic kings), 1517-1556 (Carlos I), 1707-1716 (Nueva Planta Decrees), 1841 (Navarra Ley Paccionada), 1876 (Full integration of Basq Provinces), 18178 (Concierto económico), 1931 (Estado integral), 1978 (Estado de las autonomías).

The United Kingdom: 

1535-1542 (Integration of Wales), 1603, 1707, 1800-1922 (Irish integration in the UK), 1997 and 2014, September 18. 

Swiss Confederation: 

1291, 1648 , 1848. 

Holy Alliance:

1815-1848

Zollverein: 

1818, 1834. 

TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION IN CLASS: Advantages and disadvantages of unified and decentralized states? 

Please consider the following aspects: 

1. Think of the “España de las Autonomías”. Consider the positive aspects of this extreme decentralized system and the inconveniences. For instance looking at how Spain faced the Covid pandemic. Do you find fair that the citizens of the Basks provinces and from Navarre pay less taxes that the rest of Spaniards? Do you think a common education and language should be guaranteed everywhere in the State?

2. Compare with the most centralized state in the world: France. Do you think education, taxing, Social Security, Courts and Law should be the same for every one? Responding to the idea that all citizens should be equal before the law?

   

EUROPE IN THE WORLD ORDER AFTER WORLD WAR 2

                                            José Borrel and Sergei Lavrov (21 February 2021)

The European Nation-States were destroyed in 1918. Economies in the Entente Allies and in the Central Powers sunk. The growth of national indebtedness, both internal and external, of the Entente Allies and the Central Powers rose from 27.883.000.000 USD in 1914 to 224,174,000,000 in the period 1918-1919. US economic output doubled in 4 years and became the leading economy of the world after the war. Before World War 1 European Nation-States had 55% of the World GDP, and in 1918 the US hold 45%. In 1914the US imported more than exported to Europe. In 1918 it was the other way round. Since 1918 the US became the leading World Power. It would remain so until 1945, and then will share world supremacy with the USSR. Until 1989. But the fall of the Communists regimes did not led to a unique American leadership and today we are facing a multipolar world where China, India and the Russian federation are challenging US supremacy. The problem is how Europe is facing the 21st century as a huge market (first GDP in the world) but with no leadership, as lacking of a strong Executive.  

We start studying the consequences of the crisis of the Laissez faire regimes replaced by totalitarianism in Russia (from 1917) and then in Italy (from 1922) and Germany (from 1933). As a result of this Europe saw tensions grow between the Communist and the Fascist models of Dictatorship.  Tensions that exploded for the first time in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) in which Stalin supported one side and Hitler and Mussolini the other one, while European and American democracies followed the non intervention principle. The Spanish carnage was only the prologue of a much greater global confrontation: World War 2, the result of Russian imperialism (founding of the Kommintern by Lenin in 1919) and the Mussolini’s expeditions in Libya, Abyssinia and Ethiopia, and especially Hitlerian Lebensraum. 

The paradox was that Stalinist Russia emerged on the side of the victors, after having started the war as Stalin ally (invasion of Poland two weeks after Hitler’s, and Katyn’s massacre from March to May 1940). Because Hitler made the same mistake as Napoleon invading Russia on 22 June 1941, being stopped at Stalingrad (actual Volvograd) in the fiercest battle of the whole war (From August 23, 1942 to February 2, 1943). This paradox explains why Soviet Dictatorship was accepted by intellectuals in the Western world, and the Communist Parties depending on Moscow spreaded in Western European democracies. At least until the advent of Eurocommunism, with leaders as Italian Enrico Berlinguer, as a reaction to USSR intervention during the Dubcek’s Prague’s Spring (January-August 1968).

                                                               Prague Spring  (1968)

 The Marshall Plan (1947) will be the detonator of the Cold War (1948-1989) as Stalin would not accept American aid for developing market economy in Eastern Europe. The result was the iron curtain (Churchill) and the Berlin Wall (1961-1989).

What is interesting is that Western democracies adapted to the Social Question through the development of the Welfare State Model, that paradoxically started in the US in the 1930’s with the New Deal policy of FDR. What made nevertheless European Welfare State different was the fact that the Tax payers supported the Welfare state, which made the state much stronger in Europe than in the US, where private sector is overwhelmingly bigger that the Public sector. In Europe is the other way round. From 1945 Social Security, and Public Welfare aids were supported all over Western Europe by tax payers. Something that was initially possible thanks to the extraordinary Economic growth of the Thirty Glorious years. The problem is that the 1975 Oil crisis stopped the expansionist cycle and European states could afford less and less the Welfare State System. Which brought the anti-regulation movement of the 1980’s spearheaded by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and bringing back Laissez faire liberalism. With dreadful consequences in terms of the rising of inequalities. 

Another model was developped paradoxically in the Communist’s regimes that survived by joining the market Economy, following the example of Chinese head of State Den Xiaoping (1978-1992) who invented the new system of Market Socialism that has transformed China in a leading World Power in the 21st century. A very powerful state that surprisingly is playing full the Market rules. An amazing contradiction. But so far it works. After the collapsing of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the only two real communist countries are Cuba and North Korea. 

The “socialization” of Western capitalism and the “capitalization” of Eastern Communism has led in  very efficient way to the globalization of the World, though Capitalism after the neoliberal way has produced a substantial rising of economic and social inequalities, that is leading to a new oligarchic model of the State, despite the interesting theories of   the Legal and Political American thinker John Rawls who developped a very peculiar way of making compatible the Laissez faire principle and the protection of equality. Have you heard about the Universal income? He was the guy who brought the idea into our contemporary world. 

                                                            John Rawls (1921-2002)

The consequence of globalization from the International Relations perspective is may be the beginning of a global constitutional history starting with the League of Nations (1920-1946) and following with the United Nations (since 1945), and a bunch of Treaties and International Organizations (WTO, GATT, IMF, World Bank), that seek to rule the world through negotiation and governance instead of through authority and military intervention. 

The problem for Europe is that our old Nation States are doing very poorly at the global level. We are irrelevant compared to China, Russia, India. Fortunately the United States are keeping up the Western model but definitenly not Europe. And they did so, as we are going to see tomorrow because they invented a way of getting together in an efficiente way. Something that we Europeans have not been able to do so far. 

The most important idea you have to retain of Teaching Guide 7 is how after 1945 Europe was left far behind World leadership, despite the fact that during the big economic expansion brought by the post war reconstruction of the Thirty Glorious years (1945-1975). Prosperity did not help European nation states to join the league of the leading protagonists of the World contemporary history.  

  

INSTRUCTIONS: First read the text included in your Materials (pages 163 to 181), before proceeding to answer the Concrete Questions, the Concepts and the General Questions. 

Concerning the Basic Chronology (pages 182-186) the crucial dates are the following: 

1946 (Appearance of the Italian Republic), 1947 (Marshall Plan), 1948, June (beginning of the Berlin Blockade), 1949 (Creation of NATO, Appearance of German Federal Republic and Mao’s triumph in China), 1953 (Death of Stalin), 1958 (DE Gaulle’s in power), 1959 (Castro’s victory in Cuba), 1961 (beginning of the Berlin Wall), 1963 (JFK’s assassination), 1964 (beginning of the Vietnam War), 1966 (beginning of China’s Cultural Revolution), 1968 January-August (Prague Spring), 1973 (military coup in Chile against Allende), 1974 (Nixon’s resignation Watergate scandal), 1975 (end of Vietnam War and death of Franco), 1976 (Death of Mao), 1978 (Den Xiao Ping in Power and beginning of Market Socialism in China), 1979 (Founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran), 1985 (Gorbatchev in power in the USSR), 1989, November 9 (Fall of the Berlin Wall), 1990 (German reunification), ,1991 (Extinction of the USSR), 2001, September 11 (Islamic Terrorism hits the US), 2004, March 11 (Terrorist attack in Madrid), 2005 (Angela Merkel becomes German chancellor), 2008 (Obama becomes US President), 2014 (Juan Carlos I resigns on his son Philip VI as king of Spain, and Scottish referendum of independence), 2015 (Bataclan terrorist attack in Paris), 2016 (Brexit referendum and Donald Trump election), 2017 October 1st (Catalan independence illegal referendum), 2020, January 31 (The UK leaves the EU).

New dates: 2020, March (Expansion of COVID 19’s Pandemic all over the world), 2021 (January 6: assault on US Capitol by Trump supporters; January 20: Joe Biden takes office as the 46 US President).  

  

                                                      US Capitol on January 6, 2021

TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION IN CLASS: Why Europeans despite being developed economies we do not have a decisive influence in today’s world? 

Please consider the following aspects: 

1. Remember the History of Europe in 1919-1939, and from 1945. Especially during the Cold War period. Try to think of the most influential European leaders during this period. 

2. Think why a country like the Russian Federation where the average population is facing serious economic problems is far more influential than European nation-States today. 

3. Do the US, China, Russia, India have a powerful national narrative? If so explain why and which one. And compare with the European reality. 

                                                   Narendra Modi, Indian Prime Minister

4. Is the Welfare State a problem in terms of Economic growth? Read the pages about John Rawls theory (176) before answering. Is social justice (reducing inequalities) a problem for becoming a powerful country worldwide? Think about Boris Johnson following statement: "The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends." (24 March 2021)

5. Is democracy a problem for having a powerful State? Think of how Russia has been trying to destabilize Western democracies, taking advantage of local domestic conflicts (as US Presidential Elections, Catalan Conflict, Brexit). 

   

Think as well of how China has dealt with Covid 19’s Pandemic. Is authoritarianism necessary to beat the epidemic?