Magazine / History / European Identity / Background | 22/03/2007

50 years Treaties of Rome, by Ludger Kühnhardt

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Europe in light of partnership, law and order and democracy

For centuries European countries rivalled each other for power and at the same time tried to serve as counterweights, balancing each other out. The leading European powers took their ambitions "to the end of the world”. For instance, the Caribbean island of St. Lucia changed hands between Great Britain and France 14 times in the 18th century due to various military operations. The Congress of Vienna tried to infuse some peace into the European system of states. However, the idea of the balance of power on which it was based hardly survived the 19th century. Nationalistic exaggerations were justified ideologically in the 20th century leading to two brutal European wars which caused tremendous losses of life and property. Europe's self-imposed decimation affected all people on the continent. Thus Europe became the Old Europe. Ideas of collective security which formed the basis of the 1919 peace treaties negotiated at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 did not survive continuous territorial disputes and ideological conflicts. Europe was not made safe for democracy as the then-US President Woodrow Wilson had claimed. European countries were also not made safe from each other. Countries continued to distinguish themselves from the enemy, victors triumphed, and losers exhibited a mentality of revenge. Europe in ruins – this was the essence of the crisis that led Europeans to gradually [1].

Colonial empires vanished; the two lateral powers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, dictated the general conditions of the Cold War; the European continent was divided by a wall separating democracy from dictatorship. The revision of France's security policy with regard to Germany has been one of the historic masterpieces of French diplomacy. Robert Schuman, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Fourth Republic, was the bravest and most farsighted of all politicians of the time. He did not try to make his country safe by protecting it against Germany but by establishing ties with Germany. The Schuman Declaration of 9 May 1950 was highly controversial in France. On the other hand, the West German government under Konrad Adenauer understood this gesture as an opportunity to rehabilitate Germany and start anew. At the time Germany remained ambivalent about the idea of Western European integration and the difficult issue of Germany's division. However, Adenauer's decision to choose the West changed Germany's political culture and advanced the new order of the Western part of the continent in the spirit of partnership and integration. The third important act after World War II was America's decision to remain a European power. The U.S. created NATO in 1949, a security instrument for a divided continent threatened by Soviet-led communism. The formula of the new era was reconstruction, security under the protection of the U.S., and a historic new beginning provided by the European Coal and Steel Community. Jean Monnet, the father of the concept of functional sector-specific integration of sovereignty rights in strategic key areas of the German and French economy had developed his idea of a new federal order for Europe while working for the British Embassy in the U.S. during the war.

The Treaties of Rome were to have many "founders” as is typically true of successful endeavours. What really mattered was which conceptual approach was to be taken.[2] To transfer and integrate specifically defined areas of national sovereignty to be administered by a European supranational order was as innovative as could be at the time. Ever since the Peace of Westphalia (1648), ending the Thirty Years' War, had determined the political order of Europe, the idea of national sovereignty had become an obsession. National self-determination had become the mantra of European political theorists. Even during the time of decolonialisation, the idea travelled around the world forming the base of the idea about a right to national sovereignty. This claim has constituted numerous large, medium-sized, and small nations of this planet, whether successful or failed states, many of which rose from the remains of disintegrating European colonial empires. They started anew in the name of a European ideology that had become deprecated in Europe and was about to be overtaken by European integration.

Based on the Treaties of Rome of 25 March 1957, the European integration process has not marked the beginning of the abolishment of the European nation-state. Researchers have not yet been able to agree if the integration process ultimately strives to strengthen the nation-state and thereby "saving” it or not.[3] However, it is more important to perceive European integration as a dynamic process intended to transform the nation-state that was essentially the product of the battle of states against each other – to transform it in such a way that other countries have a chance to use resources to their utmost advantage, create security among neighbours, and redefine Europe's presence in the world by cooperatively integrating the right to sovereignty.

Indeed, Europe started anew on 25 March 1957 – as a legal community uniquely combining a supranational approach with elements of an intergovernmental system of checks and balances. We still don't know whether Europe's integration might result in a federation or not.[4] Essentially, though, this argument is fruitless and irrelevant for the actual advance of the process because the European Union is in fact an open-type federation.[5] The Union can respond flexibly with regard to political processes that involve several layers of political action in Europe, i.e., the local, regional, national and EU-wide level. Today the European Parliament acts as a co-legislator in all important matters of European politics. In fact, the European Council functions as a European body and the European Court has proven time and again to be the guardian and promoter of integration.

All of this was not predictable in 1957. Three constants of the European integration process merit closer attention, though:

First and foremost, European integration is political by nature and, as such, an unending process, as is true of any other political process, striving for the best possible public order. Economic integration has never been an end in itself. Even when the delegations drafted the Treaties of Rome this was clear.[6] The economy always served a political aim – peace in a new order under the primacy of law and democracy. Neither the EEC nor the EC later nor the EU today was or has ever been able to resort to some theoretical guide. As there has never been an indisputable theory regarding European integration, there is no general, coherent theory that could serve as a manual for European integration.[7] The process of European integration has developed from concrete situations and flourished amid political, economic, social and cultural circumstances.

European unification runs against the trends of European history. To this extent, it has always been and remains a utopian project, a departure from reality as we know it to a better Europe that tries to think ahead instead of wearing itself down by constantly reverting back to unfortunate forms of power politics of years past. It should not come as a surprise that there has been no satisfying answer to the question of finalité politique. The process of European integration remains open-ended as it has been since its beginning. This constitutes a rejection of ideological and geopolitical patterns. The EU does not pursue theoretical concepts. It responds to challenges and tries to seize opportunities that present themselves at every given point in time. The normative patterns of action that the EU imposes on itself have always served as a reference point for criticisms of European integration (e.g., regarding agricultural policy, dealing with immigrants, etc.).
European integration has been a work of people. As such is has always been a product of its time. As scientists speak of constructivism, we may speak of the construction or formation of Europe as a process that has accompanied and advanced European integration since the Treaties of Rome in the sense of a new political culture that could slowly establish itself in Europe.[8] The Treaties of Rome of 1957 and the contractual reform projects that followed (the Single European Act in 1986, the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992, the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1996, and the Treaty of Nice in 2000) form a cumulative pre-constitution of the European Union. They established the status quo that the European constitution has tried to concretise in order to guarantee democracy and ensure the EU's ability to act in an era of globalisation and in view of the more than thirty member-states the Union will soon comprise.

The course through the first five decades of this period of European integration was not without obstacles; it was often difficult, irritatingly slow, and accompanied by crises and relapses. It can be divided into three distinct phases:

1957 to 1973: During the first phase of European integration, the central institutions were established which made the development from the EEC to the EC so unique in European political history. The European Commission established itself as the guardian of the Treaties; the European Court became the engine behind the implementation of common resolutions and thus the driving force behind establishing Community law. The completion of the customs union and the first successful enlargement to include the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, and Denmark, however, could not hide the fact that the necessary political and military integration had not yet succeeded although Europe's institutions had developed from the European Economic Community to the European Community.

1973 to 1989: Major successes of this phase in which the European Community was about to become the European Union (the term was formally introduced together with the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992) included the full integration of the internal market, the direct election of the European Parliament by EU citizens, and the slow expansion of co-decision-making rights, two more rounds of enlargement to include the South Eastern democracies of Greece, Spain, and Portugal as new member-states as well as the beginning of serious cooperation in the field of foreign policy.

1989 to 2007: The introduction of the euro and the further development of Union citizenship, successful enlargement rounds to include the formally neutral countries Austria, Finland, and Sweden, but especially the spectacular Eastern enlargement in two phases, in 2004 and 2007, to include twelve new member-states, most of which are post-communist, and the signing of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe marked the most pronounced developmental leap in the history of European integration. At the same time, this process was to face serious setbacks. The joy that sprang from the mostly successful reunification of Europe was clouded by the terrible backslide into four wars due to the dissolution of Yugoslavia into its successor states; after the rejection of the European constitution in France and the Netherlands, all that European politicians could do in view of the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaties of Rome was to prepare a vague "Declaration of Berlin” instead of joyfully announcing the ratification of the constitution as the completion and highlight of this phase of European integration.

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