THE HISTORY OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION

European countries warred for many centuries. A serious effort to stop the seem­ingly endless European wars once and for all was made after World War I. In 1914, European leaders had sent their countries' youths to war fired with enthusiasm. Each side expected a quick and heroic victory. The eventual Allied victory, how­ever, came only after four years of trench warfare and tremendous losses on both sides. After the war, many well-meaning people became active in the so-called Pan-European movement, which demanded the unification of Europe so war could never again break out. Members of this movement" urged Europeans to recognize their common cultural heritage. But the time for this movement was not yet ripe. Mussolini's Fascist party took over Italy in 1922. In 1929, the Great Depression began. In 1933, Hitler became dictator of Germany, and, in 1939, another world war began.

World War II was, if possible, even more dreadful than World War I. Aerial bombardment increasingly spread the suffering directly to the civilian population. «After the war, the idea of European unification was quickly brought up again. In a famous speech in Zurich in 1946, Winston Churchill called for the construc­tion of a "kind of United States of Europe."-

A first step was the foundation of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, in 1949. Its members were drawn from the national parliaments of the Western European democracies. The Council of Europe had only a consultative character. It required no surrender of national sovereignty, and its decisions were based on unanimous votes, giving each country a veto power. The Council of Europe still exists today and does important work in the area of human rights. Its Commission on Human Rights investigates human rights abuses. The European Council also has a Court of Human Rights. Although it has no means to „enforce its rulings, they are widely followed by the member states. With the establish­ment of the Social Charta, the European Council has expanded its activities to the area of social rights. The charta guarantees, for example, the right to work, the right to health care, and the right to welfare. Such rights, however, are much more controversial than human rights so that in the social rights area the Euro­pean Council is less influential.'

After the breakdown of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, it was the Council of Europe that offered to these countries the first access to a European institution. Compared with the European Union, the Council of Europe is much less important. For an outside observer, it is sometimes not easy to keep the European Council apart from the Parliament of the European Union because both bodies meet in the same building in Strasbourg.

The European Union had its institutional beginning in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which was founded by the Treaty of Paris on April 18, 1951- Coal and steel were at the time the crucial elements in any war effort. To pool these important raw materials on a European level should prevent future wars in Europe. With this goal in mind, the key aspect was to include both France and the Federal Republic of Germany, which had gone to war with

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each other three times in the preceding 100 years: 1870-1871, 1914-1918, and 1939-1945. Also participating in the ECSC were Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The initiative was made successful through such leaders as Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman of France, Alcide de Gasperi of Italy, and Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium, who are today counted as the founding fathers of the Euro­pean Union. For them the concept ot_functional integration of Europe was of crucial importance.

;' In 1954, European integration suffered a painful setback. The six member countries of the European Coal and Steel Community had planned to extend their collaboration to the establishment of a European Defense Community. Five coun­tries had already ratified the corresponding treaty when the French National Assembly voted against it, not wishing to have French troops under a common European command.

After this setback in defense affairs, the economic route to European inte­gration was pursued further. A common market for coal and steel having been established, its six member countries extended their economic collaboration to other areas. In 1957, they signed the crucial Treaty of Rome, establishing the European Economic Community (EEC). For the peaceful use of nuclear energy, they created a special organization, the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). The three communities, ECSC, EEC, and Euratom, were never merged into a single entity. But there were good reasons to regard them as constituting one unit so far as their political and legal structure was concerned. In the media and in everyday life, the usage developed to call the three communities the European Community (EC). On February l6, 1978, the European Parliament acknowledged this usage and accepted a resolution that the three communities "be designated the European Community."

Despite Churchill's Zurich speech, Great Britain was not a founding mem­ber of the European Community. Even by 1957, the British still did not really feel that they were a part of Europe. For the British, Europe was the Continent, and when they crossed the English Channel, they considered that they were "going to Europe." But already in the 1960s Britain had changed its mind and— mainly out of economic necessity—applied for membership. France, under de;

Gaulle, feared for its own leadership position and twice it vetoed the entry of Britain. It was only in 1973, when de Gaulle was out of office, that Britain was able to join. To this day, many British citizens have strong emotional reservations about the process of European integration. Denmark and the Republic of Ireland also joined the EC in 1973, increasing its membership from six to nine. With the entry of Greece in 1981, and of Spain and Portugal in 1986, the EC became the current "Europe of the twelve" (see Box 17.1).

To revitalize the EC, its member countries signed on February 18, 1986, the Single European Act. Its goal was to set up a common market for goods, labor, capital, and services by the end of 1992. These goals were already contained in the Treaty of Rome, but with the Single European Act a fixed timetable was set up, and by January 1, 1993, the EC had indeed—with a few exceptions—reached the goal of a common market. Profiting from the momentum of the project during

3SO WESTERN, CENTRAL, AND EASTERN EUROPE

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