Orchestrating Europe (Text Only). Keith Middlemas

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The European Integration Experience

       RICHARD T. GRIFFITHS

1

       1945–58 ¹

      In 1945 western Europe counted the cost of yet another continental conflict, the third in the space of seventy years involving France and Germany. Yet by 1958, these two countries had formed the core of a new supranational ‘community’, transforming intra-state relations in the space of thirteen years. It represented a development to which many in 1945 would have aspired but which few would have dared to hope would be realised so quickly. This evolution marked the beginning of what is commonly referred to as ‘the process of European integration’.

      It is worth pausing to consider the double connotation of the word ‘integration’, since the expression is used to imply both a sequence of institutional changes (all involving the surrender of national sovereignty) and the enmeshing of economies and societies that it is intended should flow from these measures. To be more precise, ‘integration’ was one of the goals of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), founded by France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries in 1952, and of the European Economic Community (EEC) and EURATOM, both founded by the same six states in 1958. Nonetheless, we should realize that this term intentionally excepts many other types of institutional change on the grounds that they are ‘inter-governmental’, and do not involve the surrender of sovereignty. It also marginalizes other sources, institutional or otherwise, of Europe’s growing ‘interdependence’.

      The ‘process of integration’ is given pride of place in the memoirs of those most closely identified with it. This is because they were convinced of the historical importance of their achievements, but also because they were eager to win the propaganda war against the existing inter-governmental alternatives, which they perceived as weak and incapable of sustaining further development.² The institutions and workings of the new supranational communities were pushed further into the limelight by the writings of a generation of political scientists, attracted by the novelty of provisions in the Community and the dynamic inherent in their operations. Their attitudes have subsequently been projected backwards onto the past in a series of histories which concentrate on the struggle for supranational, even federal, institutions, but which mostly exclude developments elsewhere. Yet the EEC came onto the scene relatively late in the day and although the ECSC had been created six years earlier, it was limited in its economic impact. Insofar as the economic boom of the 1950s and the trade expansion that accompanied it had been caused by institutional changes, its origins lay elsewhere. The EEC’s creation witnessed the end of western Europe’s financial and commercial rehabilitation and not the beginning.

      Since the late 1970s, a new generation of historians, trudging in the wake of the so-called ‘thirty year rule’ – the period before which some national governments grant access to their archives – have been rewriting the history of this period. Much of this work has still to be assimilated into mainstream accounts but, once it has been, its main achievement will have been to widen the perspective and context of analysis and to rediscover the complexity of the past. This, in itself, has often constituted an antidote to the simplistic ‘high politics’ analysis (and sometimes straight federalist propaganda) of existing accounts. However, thus far historians have been less than successful in agreeing on a coherent ‘alternative’ explanation to federalist accounts.

      One casualty of the new history has been ‘American hegemony theory’, at least in its early chronology. The ‘hegemonic leadership’ theory argues that the existence of an American political hegemony allowed for the reconciliation of lesser, more localized national differences. Thus, at the height of its relative economic, political, military and moral power, the United States is supposed to have used its good offices to establish a liberal world order and, more particularly, to have supported ‘integrative’ solutions to world problems that mirrored its own history and that seemed to underpin its own success and prosperity. The new, revisionist literature has demonstrated the limits of hegemonic power and has raised awareness of the degree to which Europe has been able to resist American influence. Equally, it has underscored the ‘European’ as opposed to the American motives in seeking to ‘change the rules’ of European inter-state relations through institutional innovation and reform.

      Secondly, historians have stumbled into the ‘actor-agency’ dilemma already familiar to political scientists. Initially, much of the literature focused on the actors: the ideas that drove them, the positions of political power they occupied and their role in the nexus of key players, together with the political processes which they adapted or invented to accomplish their ends. The need to find peace in western Europe and to build a bulwark against totalitarianism formed the ‘real world’ components in this analysis. Subsequently, historians working usually in governmental archives have found a more prosaic subtext to these events. Far from an heroic, visionary quest for a better future, they recount the story of an entrenched defence of perceived national interest. This version of history is often juxtaposed against the earlier approaches but the two are not necessarily irreconcilable. The international agreements that underpin the integration ‘process’ were usually submitted to parliamentary scrutiny and the threat of rejection placed constraints on too cavalier a surrender of sovereignty on issues of real public concern. Moreover, the whole idea of ‘supranationality’ is to adapt the rules of future political behaviour, to determine a new ‘how’ for the political process. It may remain a primary goal even if it requires a surrender of consistency or elegance in the short-term.

      This version of ‘perceived national interest’ is itself the outcome of domestic political processes and is susceptible to changes in the balance both within governments and between governments. СКАЧАТЬ