This article was taken from John Pinder's The European Union: A Very Short Introduction.The European Union of today is the result of a process that began half a century ago with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community. Those two industries then still provided the industrial muscle for military power; and Robert Schuman, the French Foreign Minister, affirmed on 9 May 1950 in his declaration which launched the project that "any war between France and Germany" would become "not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible."
It may not be easy, at today’s distance, to appreciate how much this meant, only five years after the end of the war of 1939-45 which had brought such terrible suffering to almost all European countries. For France and Germany, which had been at war with each other three times in the preceding eight decades, finding a way to live together in a durable peace was a fundamental political priority that the new Community was designed to serve.
For France the prospect of a completely independent Germany, with its formidable industrial potential, was alarming. The attempt to keep Germany down, as the French had tried to do after the 1914-18 war, had failed disastrously. The idea of binding Germany within strong institutions, which would equally bind France and other European countries and thus be acceptable to Germans over the longer term, seemed more promising. That promise has been amply fulfilled. The French can regard the European Community (EC) and now the European Union (EU) as the outcome of their original initiative, which became the central project of their European policy. The French have at the same time sought, with considerable success, to play the part of a leader among European nations. But participation in these European institutions on an equal basis has also given the Germans a framework within which to develop peaceful and constructive relations with the growing number of other member states.
For Germans, following the twelve years of Nazi rule that ended with devastation in 1945, the Community offered a way to become a respected people again. The idea of a Community of equals with strong institutions was attractive. Schuman declared that the new Community would be "the first concrete foundation of a European federation which is indispensable to the preservation of peace." But whereas the French commitment to developing the Community in a federal direction has been variable, the German political class, having thoroughly absorbed the concept of federal democracy, has quite consistently supported such development. In 1992, indeed, an amendment to the Basic Law of the reunited Germany provided for its participation in the European Union committed to federal principles.
The other four founder states (Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands), also saw the new Community as a means to ensure peace by binding Germany within strong European institutions. For the most part they too, like the Germans, saw the Community as a stage in the development of a federal polity and have largely continued to do so.
Although the memory of World War Two is receding into a more distant past, the motives of peace and security that were fundamental to the foundation of the Community remains a powerful influence on governments and politicians in the six founder states. The system that has provided a framework for half a century of peace is regarded as a guarantee of future stability. A recent example was the decision to consolidate it by introducing the single currency, seen as a way to reinforce the safe anchorage of the potentially more powerful Germany after its reunification; and in the coming period there will be continuing pressure to strengthen the Union’s institutions in order to maintain stability as eastern enlargement increases the number of member states towards thirty or more, including at least a dozen new democracies. The focus on the economic aspects of integration that has been common among British politicians has diverted attention away from this underlying motive and restricted their ability to play an influential and constructive part in such developments.
While a durable peace was a profound political motive for establishing the new Community, it would not have succeeded without adequate performance in the economic field in which it was given its powers. But the Community did in fact serve economic as well as political logic. The frontiers between France, Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg, standing between steel plants and the mines whose coal they required, impeded rational production; and the removal of those barriers, accompanied by common governance of the resulting common market, was successful in economic terms. This, together with the evidence that peaceful reconciliation among the member states was being achieved, encouraged them to see the European Coal and Steel Community as a first step, as Schuman had indicated, in a process of political as well as economic unification. After a false attempt at a second step, when the French National Assembly failed to ratify a treaty for a European Defence Community in 1954, the six founder states proceeded again on the path of economic integration. The concept of the common market was extended to the whole of their mutual trade in goods when the European Economic Community (EEC) was founded in 1958, opening up the way to an integrated economy that responded to the logic of economic interdependence among the member states.
The EEC was also, thanks to French insistence on surrounding the common market with a common external tariff, able to enter trade negotiations on level terms with the United States; and this demonstrated the potential of the Community to become a major actor in the international system when it has a common instrument with which to conduct an external policy. It was a first step towards satisfying another motive for creating the Community; to restore European influence in the wider world, which had been dissipated by the two great fratricidal wars.
The British, who had not suffered the shock of defeat and did not share the conviction that there must be a radical reform of the European system of nation-states, stood aside from the Community in the 1950s. With some exceptions, they failed to understand the strength of the case for such reform. One such exception was Winston Churchill who, less than a year and a half after the end of the war, said in a speech in Zurich: "We must now build a kind of United States of Europe...the first step must be a partnership between France and Germany...France and Germany must take the lead together." But although few among the British understood so well the case for a new Community, many were reluctant to be disadvantaged in Continental markets and excluded from the taking of important policy decisions. So, after failing to secure a free trade area that would incorporate the EEC as well as other West European countries, successive British governments sought entry into the Community, finally succeeding in 1973. But while the British played a leading part in developing the common market into a more complete single market, they continued to lack the political motives that have driven the founder states, as well as some others, to press towards other forms of deeper integration.
It is important to understand the motives of the founders and of the British which, while they continue to evolve, still influence attitudes towards the European Union. Such motives are shared, in various proportions, by other states that have acceded over the years; and the dozen or more that can be expected to join in the next decade or two will bring their own mixture of motives, including a strong desire among most of them to join the European mainstream after their long period of exclusion under Soviet domination. These differing varieties of political and economic motives underlie much of the drama that has unfolded during the last fifty years, to produce the European Union.
This article was taken from John Pinder's The European Union: A Very Short Introduction.