European Integration. Mark Gilbert

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СКАЧАТЬ prime minister, Paul Ramadier; the Economic and Social Committee, chaired by Van Zeeland; and the Cultural Committee, chaired by an exiled Spanish liberal, Salvador de Madariaga. These committees drew up three broad resolutions. The Political Committee asserted that it was the “urgent duty” of the nations of Europe to create “an economic and political union” that would “assure security and social progress.” It maintained that the “integration of Germany in a United or Federated Europe” was the only “solution to both the economic and political aspects of the German problem.” Its main practical recommendation was the convening of a “European Assembly,” composed of delegations from the national parliaments, which would act as a constituent assembly for the creation of a federal state in Western Europe.⁴⁸ It also proposed that a commission should draw up a charter of human rights, adherence to which would be a precondition for membership in the European Federation.⁴⁹

      The Economic and Social Committee made pragmatic recommendations for economic policy. Trade restrictions of all kinds should be abolished “step by step”; coordinated action should be taken to “pave the way for the free convertibility of currencies”; a common program should be established to develop agriculture; Europe-wide planning was urged for the development of core industries such as coal and electricity generation; employment policy should be coordinated so as to produce full employment. The “mobility of labor” should be promoted to the “maximum possible extent.” In addition, it advised that these measures should be only the prelude to an Economic Union in which capital moved freely, currencies were unified, budgetary and credit policies were centrally coordinated, a full customs union with a common tariff was established, and social legislation was coordinated to common standards. The greater prosperity engendered by these economic measures was held to be an essential precondition for the “development of a harmonious society in Europe.”⁵⁰

      The Cultural Committee recommended the creation of a “European Cultural Centre,” whose task would be to promote cultural exchanges, promote awareness of European unity, encourage the federation of the continent’s universities, and facilitate scientific research into “the condition of twentieth-century man.” A “European Institute for Childhood and Youth Questions” was also to be established: one of its tasks, since partly realized in the Erasmus and Socrates programs of the European Union, would have been to “encourage exchanges between the young people of all classes in Europe, by providing finance and accommodation for their study, apprenticeship and travel.” Like the Political Committee, the Cultural Committee recommended that a charter of human rights should be drawn up and a European Supreme Court, with supranational jurisdiction, should be established to ensure the charter’s implementation.⁵¹

The Congress had two main institutional outcomes. In October 1948, a unified “European Movement” was formally inaugurated in the city hall of Brussels. The new movement’s “Presidents of Honor” were Churchill, Blum, De Gasperi, and the then–prime minister of Belgium, Paul-Henri Spaak. In August 1948, the European Movement presented detailed projects for unification to the Permanent Commission of the Western Union.

THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE

      The Treaty on Western Union had been signed in Brussels in March 1948 by the governments of Britain, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. The treaty, as well as being a military alliance, bound its participants to develop and harmonize the economic recovery of Europe and to raise the standards of living of their populations. Its Permanent Commission was supposed to be the forum for such mutual cooperation between governments in the economic field.

      The Treaty on Western Union was a far cry from the much greater degree of integration wished for by the European Movement, but its provisions, like the equally intergovernmental structure of the OEEC, accurately reflected how far Britain was prepared to move down the road toward supranational cooperation in the spring of 1948.

      British hostility to a federal state in Europe might seem a foregone conclusion. Interestingly, however, Foreign Secretary Bevin himself had been, for much of 1947, intrigued by the notion of a European customs union and was seemingly prepared to acquiesce to the loss of sovereignty such an institution implied. The problem with a customs union was that while greater economic integration in Western Europe would lead to a rationalization of British heavy industry and expand trade and strengthen the continent politically, it would also lead to damaging short-run competition for the iron and steel industry and would end Britain’s advantageous trade relationship with the countries of the Commonwealth. A customs union seemed likely, moreover, to lead to a fully fledged economic union governed by supranational institutions. The notion of conferring sovereignty over the economy to an external body was even harder for a socialist government to accept than it would have been for the Conservatives. Labour ministers were in no mood to subordinate their socialist vision for British society to the economic priorities of foreigners.

In December 1947, the disastrous outcome of the London meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) placed European cooperation firmly on the agenda. The CFM was the forum through which the United States, the USSR, and Great Britain, together with France and China, should have agreed on a postwar settlement. Its meetings, however, became steadily more acrimonious as mutual perceptions of ideological enmity grew. The London meeting, which was preceded by vituperative Soviet propaganda against the Americans’ plans to “enslave” Europe, left free Europe’s leaders in no doubt that, as Bevin expressed the situation in a paper titled “The First Aim of British Foreign Policy” to the British Cabinet in January 1948: “We shall be hard put to it to stem further encroachments of the Soviet tide” in the absence of “some form of union in Western Europe, whether of a formal or informal character.”⁵²

      The discussion in the Cabinet of this paper led to Bevin’s famous “Western Union” speech to the House of Commons on January 22, 1948, which included the telling remark, “Great Britain cannot stand outside Europe and regard its problems as quite separate from those of its European neighbors.” In Europe, this comment, not unreasonably, was taken as a sign that Britain was preparing to throw its prestige behind the concept of European unity. Certainly, it was the decisive impulse that led to the signature of the Brussels Pact.⁵³

      Britain regarded its promotion of the Western Union as a major development in its foreign policy, but, in fact, its attitude toward European integration satisfied neither the Americans—who wanted Britain to go further down the road to supranationalism—nor its European neighbors. Throughout the fall of 1948, Britain resisted all attempts by the European Movement to persuade governments to implement the resolutions agreed at the Congress of Europe, in particular the creation of an assembly of parliamentarians that could lobby for greater European unity.⁵⁴ An irritated Bevin told the House of Commons on September 15, 1948, that proposals to create political institutions before sorting out mutual defense and economic relations between governments was like “putting on the roof before building the house.”⁵⁵ The British were reluctant to go farther than the creation of a council of European governments, without any form of parliamentary supervision. Many in the European Movement were pressing for the constitution of a federal European state.

The other governments of Western Europe were more receptive to the European Movement’s assiduous lobbying. On January 29, 1949, the five Brussels Powers agreed to establish the Council of Europe, where decision making was to be reserved for the Committee of Ministers (as it was named), but an assembly with consultative powers was to be created in tandem. Five other nations who had not signed the Brussels Pact—Italy, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden—were invited to join (the European Movement regretted that nascent West Germany was not invited).⁵⁶ Italy’s foreign minister, Count Carlo Sforza, immediately recommended that the new body be called the “European Union.” Bevin swatted aside Sforza’s bumptious diplomacy without difficulty. The Treaty of St. James Palace (London, May 15, 1949) instituting the Council of Europe was rigorously intergovernmental in design. It also excluded defense questions from its remit: Britain intended such issues to be dealt with by the North Atlantic Treaty, which had been signed СКАЧАТЬ