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

50 years Treaties of Rome, by Ludger Kühnhardt

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Crises as driving forces of European integration

Crises have been steady companions on the way to European integration. One could start to think that the process requires crises in order to advance – generally for the better.[1] Naturally, not all the roads leading to European integration have been straight. The past five centuries saw dead-ends, break-ups, and unintended consequences. Even the every beginning was marked by a crisis: Without the existential experience of the catastrophe of World War II, there would probably never have been a revolution in Franco-German relations, i.e., the fundamental change of France's understanding of security and the benefits of mutual cooperation among all the founding members of the EEC, primarily of France with the Federal Republic of Germany. Without the borderline experience of the power of European colonial empires there would probably have been no revision of Europe's belief in its own importance and no inescapable need for integration, especially in the case of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Without the external pressure exerted by the Soviet Union, its geopolitical ambitions, and the ideological challenge it put up, Western Europe might not have understood that security could not be guaranteed by the U.S. alone but that democracy, freedom, and prosperity would only be possible through the gradual integration of national sovereignty under the guise of an increasingly closely-knit, slowly growing union of the countries of Europe. Temporary disruptions to the process of European integration always turned out to be "healthy” crises in the end.

When the French National Assembly removed the ratification of the Treaty establishing a European Defence Community from the agenda, on 29 August 1954, thereby preventing its ratification in a country that had been the most fervent advocate of a European army only two years earlier, this was not the end of Europe's new start.[2] On the contrary, the process was accelerated and only two and a half years later culminated in the signing of the Treaties of Rome, based on the resolutions of the Messina Conference of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs (1 -3 June 1955), the Spaak Report (April 1956), and a draft treaty prepared by a small circle of leading officials of the six member-states of the European Coal and Steel Community in the autumn/winter of 1956 and 1957. The Treaties' ratification by the parliaments of the six future EEC member-states was also not without controversy. However, in the end it was crowned by success.

On 1 July 1965 when the French President Charles de Gaulle ordered his officers and ministers not to attend meetings of the EEC any longer, some feared that the Community would end soon. In fact that could have happened because its overall structure was still too unstable. According to the Treaties of Rome, France had agreed that the European agricultural system be detailed in cooperation with the European Consultative Assembly. As of 1 January 1966, agricultural policy was to be shaped based on majority rule. When things had progressed to that point, de Gaulle felt that this loss of national autonomy in decision-making had gone a bit too far for his liking. In the end the Luxembourg Compromise of 29 January 1966 was reached according to which the principle of unanimous voting in the EEC would be retained. Member-states would have to continue negotiating until a compromise be reached that was acceptable to all. It took two decades before new initiatives (particularly the Genscher-Colombo-Plan of 7 November 1981) resulted in the "Single European Act" (signed on 17 February 1986, becoming effective on 1 July 1987). It opened the door to majority voting in the European Community and marked the way to the European Parliament's co-decision-making authority in future European legislative procedures.

In 1961 the heads of state and government of the EEC commissioned the French diplomat Christian Fouchet to write a report about the perspectives and possible contents of a European political union. First, the two reports he presented subsequently went straight to the archives. The representatives of the member-states felt that the time was not yet ripe for implementing Fouchet's ambitious projects. But the genie was out of the bottle and discussions about a political union would not stop. The Treaty of Maastricht (signed on 7 February 1992, becoming effective on 1 November 1993) stipulated this objective constitutionally.

When the "Werner Plan”, named after Luxembourg's former Prime Minister Pierre Werner, was presented in October 1970 nobody could know that the roadmap it contained for a European economic and monetary union would take three decades to implement.[3] It was planned to introduce a single European currency within one decade. The oil crisis and the disintegration of the international financial and monetary system ("Bretton Woods") established after World War II caused some of Europe's leading national economies to reject it headedly after 1971. Gradually, however, awareness of the inescapable need for adjusting and harmonising macro-economic and monetary parameters gained ground again. As a result of new monetary crises, the member-states opted for introducing a common currency gradually so that we have all been paying with the euro since 2002.

The rejection of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe by the majority of voters in referendums held France and the Netherlands in 2005 marked the outbreak of the latest crisis of the EU. In the meantime, most EU countries, representing the majority of EU citizens, have ratified the Treaty. The institutions of the EU are functional until the next election of the European Parliament and the new appointment of the next European Commission. However, the EU institutions hope to solve the constitution issue by 2009. Whatever this piece of work might be called in the end and whatever may be enshrined in the document: essentially, the European Union is struggling for nothing less than a new "pact with its citizens”, that means, in fact, the literal re-creation and justification of the EU. The Union can flourish only if it guarantees its inhabitants law and order, security, and prosperity and if it vests its global presence with the necessary means because the world counts on the EU as a cornerstone of the world order.

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