ABSTRACT
What are the distinguishing characteristics of an integrated organisation as opposed to other international organisations that governments join? Professor Alan Milward and Vibeke Sorensen made the distinction clear between integrated and interdependent organisations (Milward et al., 1993, Chapter 1). International organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) operate on the basis of ‘interdependence’, i.e. a group of national governments co-operate together in certain policy areas and agreements are made based on mutual cooperation. Such organisations do not interfere with the policy-making of their member states, their decisions do not overrule national policies and there is little if any power or sanction to impose policies on member states. This is the most common type of international organisation or basis of agreement. Integration, however, requires the creation of a ‘supranational organisation’
such as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) 1951 and the European Economic Community (EEC) 1957. Here the member states transfer some policy decisions to a body of all member states, the decisions of which are binding on all members and have to be followed. So member states within supranational organisations transfer some power (sovereignty) to that organisation. Furthermore, the supranational organisation has the power to impose sanctions on member governments, in cases of non-compliance with policy decisions or breaches of agreements. For example, in the EEC one of the functions of the European Commission is to act as a ‘policeman’ to ensure compliance and another EEC organ, the European Court of Justice, makes legal judgments (that take precedence over member states’ national law) in cases of dispute. What are the practical benefits of integrated supranational organisations
over international interdependent bodies? While acknowledging that the administrative and other costs are higher, Milward et al. (1993) identify three key advantages of European economic integration. In the first place the agreements were ‘irreversible’ (or at least less easily reversed). The Rome Treaty 1957 establishing the EEC set no time limit, i.e. it is intended to be of an indefinite duration. This is unusual, as treaties normally are for prescribed
periods, which can be extended (e.g. the NATO Treaty 1949 was originally for 20 years) or have to be renegotiated (e.g. the original Non-Proliferation Treaty 1963, where states agreed not to acquire nuclear weapons, which expired in 1995). The Rome Treaty also contains no procedures for members to leave the European Economic Community (Greenland left the EEC but this was after achieving independence from Denmark). The significance of these points is that integration provides a much greater guarantee that agreements and policies once made will be adhered to continuously. Such arrangements are therefore secure as there is more certainty that deals struck between nation states will continue and not be broken. (The importance of this is underlined by the instance when Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop presented Adolf Hitler on his birthday with a casket containing copies of all the treaties he had broken!) The second advantage of supranational organisations is their ‘exclusiveness’
as an integrated body. The six members of the EEC from 1957 onwards could exclude other prospective members unless they accepted their terms, the ‘acquis communitaire’ concept, i.e. new members have to agree to accept all the ‘club’ rules. This makes the integrated organisation a strong cohesive force, enhances its bargaining position with outsiders and provides it with the potential to discriminate. Britain in 1955 at first joined but then withdrew from the talks that established the EEC in 1957. Then in 1961 when Britain decided to join after all, it was excluded by de Gaulle (Britain joined 12 years later on its third attempt) and was discriminated against by the Common External Tariff – the EEC’s protectionist tariff wall. The third advantage of an integrated organisation, according to Milward et
al., is that they are more ‘law abiding’. The Treaty of Paris 1951 and Treaties of Rome 1957 created a new legal system and framework to regulate both the institutions’ and members’ powers, rights and obligations. The institutional arrangements for European economic integration in the
1950s were part of the solution to the big question facing Western Europe – how to live safely with Germany and the USSR. However, whilst this helps explain the integrated organisational form
adopted it does not specifically answer why it was that the ECSC 1951 and the EEC 1957 were set up. Why did six governments sign these two treaties? Why did other governments refuse to join? Why, too, does it appear that only economic integration succeeds? (Attempts at non-economic ‘integration’ have, like the European Defence Community (EDC) of 1950-54, collapsed.) There are three schools of thought offering explanations for European
integration. Most books on the European Community contain a chapter on ‘origins’ that weaves a story based on the first two types of explanation examined here. The orthodox explanation for European integration is not historical at all
but drawn from political science. The argument is that the increased complexity of both the post-1945 international order and the range and functions of the modern nation state mean that countries are inexorably entwined in a
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network of functioning international bodies (such as NATO, the United Nations (UN), or GATT), and the scope for independent action by individual states is curtailed by collective decision taking. It is further argued that once integrated organisations are established there is an inevitable tendency for further integration to occur so that the ECSC 1951 led to the EEC 1957 or the Single European Act (SEA) 1986 led to the objective of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in the EU Treaty 1992. So, once European integration has started it becomes a self-sustaining process, powered by Brussels Eurocrats, resulting in the piecemeal incremental integration of Europe. This process is expected to result in a Federal United States of Europe. The inevitable result of increasing the scope of an integrated supranational organisation is the eventual demise of the nation state whose functions, responsibilities and sovereignty are transferred to the supranational state (George, 1992; Haas, 1958; Milward et al., 1993). As we shall see, this orthodox explanation appears less than satisfactory as
an interpretation of the facts, namely the limited extent of integration over the past 40 years. The fact is that it has been exclusively economic and that decision-making (and so political power) still lies with national governments acting together within the European Union. The European Commission makes proposals, it does not take decisions. The European Parliament is not a legislature; it has always had the right to be consulted and now has some ‘codecision’ rights, but has never passed a law in 40 years. Political power in the European Community lies with the member states: decisions are taken collectively by them within the Council of Ministers. It seems highly improbable that the integration process inevitably leads to the disappearance of the nation state and the creation of a federal Europe. Whereas in the 1960s this undoubtedly appeared a plausible outcome and was enshrined in this orthodox explanation, its validity as a theory now looks unconvincing in the light of recent historical analysis of governments’ archival records from the 1950s. The second school of thought attributes European integration to the ideas,
growth and influence of European federalist movements particularly from World War II (1939-45) onwards. Professor Walter Lipgens, the main exponent of this view, undertook detailed studies of the numerous movements and organisations advocating European federalism, the nurturing and development of the ideas in various wartime non-communist resistance movements in occupied Europe as well as the intrigue and ideological disputes between the various post-war pressure groups. Lipgens regards Euro-federalism as an inevitable and logical post-war policy based on the ideas and proposals of the resistance movements and the UK’s ‘Federal Union’ 1939-41. Furthermore, he claims that lobbying and publicity by European federalist movements after 1945 resulted in moves to implement Euro-federal ideas, the outcome being the first supranational authority in 1950. Lipgens’ thesis is that a combination of the inherent logic of a federal
solution for Europe (as an antidote to the destructive forces of total war, the Holocaust’s genocide, totalitarianism, extreme nationalism and human-rights
and theories of
abuses of the period 1933-45), the public support and promotion of federalism from politicians and intelligentsia, and a rising groundswell of mass public support for the idea failed to achieve complete fruition only because of two impediments. What Lipgens referred to as the ‘first obstacle’ was the declared antipathy of both the US and USSR between 1943-47 towards the idea of a federal Europe. However with the beginning of Soviet-American superpower rivalry in the Cold War from 1947-48, the US became an interested convert and then an enthusiastic advocate of Euro-federal solutions. Yet, by then a ‘second opposing force’ was West European governments themselves (who would have had to approve and implement any federation). For Lipgens the British, Scandinavian and French governments were ‘bastions of stubborn nationalist traditions’ and therefore the federal idea never achieved a real breakthrough. Nevertheless, Lipgens argues that between 1945 and 1955 when ‘the poli-
cies for European Union were taking shape the political pressure groups advocating union or federation were especially important; one cannot understand or describe the pre-history of the European movement or its beginnings without studying the activity of these groups’. The Union Européene de Fédéralistes (UEF) emerged from the Hertenstein meeting in December 1946 (its membership doubling to 200,000 between 1947-50). According to Lipgens the UEF by ‘increasingly successful lobbying made a big contribution to the integration effort between 1950-54’. However, the only instance of successful lobbying by the UEF cited by Lipgens was Article 38 of the European Defence Community Treaty which assigned to its future parliament the task of framing a European constitution (Lipgens, 1982, pp. 12, 85; 1980, p. 119). The EDC/EPC attempt at integration collapsed – rejected by the French national assembly in August 1954. The only example Lipgens provides for successful influence and lobbying by European federalist movements was for an aborted scheme. Lipgens asserts that the European federalist movements influenced the earlier ECSC 1951 but no supportive evidence is provided. However, he admits that after the miscarriage of the EDC scheme the European federalist movements had little or no influence over the subsequent Rome Treaties of 1957 (Lipgens, 1980, p. 137), which remain the principal instances of European economic integration establishing a common market in the European Economic Community and a joint programme for developing atomic energy in Euratom. Also, as Professor Alan Milward shows, Jean Monnet, ‘the father of European integration’, appears completely uninterested and uninvolved with European federalist movements between 1945-48 and is never mentioned by Lipgens in his studies. Furthermore, Monnet’s conversion to the idea of European integration was apparently due initially to American – not European federalist – influence (Milward, 1992, p. 335). It was Jean Monnet who was responsible for starting the scheme for the ECSC. Lipgens’ thesis that the European integration of the 1950s was somehow
the inevitable outcome of the European federalist movements’ pressure and
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influence is hard to sustain, given the absence of real linkage between the transnational political pressure groups working for a European federation and the actual integrated organisations established by governments in the 1950s. Nevertheless, the European federalist movements remain more than an interesting intellectual and political phenomenon, as the following chapter will show, resulting in the tangible institutional development of the Council of Europe. Lipgens’ focus on the history of European federalist movements as an
explanation for what followed appears superficially attractive and plausible but it inevitably ignores all the evidence drawn from national governments’ archives that reveal the internal departmental debates over policy options and objectives involved and the basis for decisions taken. Such documentary evidence, as subsequent chapters show, reveals that the
motives and intentions of the six states that signed the Treaty of Paris 1951 and Treaties of Rome 1957 did not (rhetoric aside) include ‘federation’. Nevertheless, it might reasonably be contended that even if the European
federalist movements’ direct influence over the practice and procedures of European integrated bodies was minimal at least their long publicised prescriptions and prognoses for Europe were relevant. This may be so but their advocacy of a Customs Union (the central mechanism in both the ECSC and EEC) was an old idea: the Zollverein centred on Prussia was a Customs Union, incorporating many of the German states as early as 1833, and 193132 saw two proposals for Customs Unions between Germany and Austria, and by Belgium and Luxembourg in the Ouchy Convention July 1932. The third type of explanation of European integration is entirely historical,
based on the work of political, diplomatic and economic historians. The ‘30year rule’ meant that from the early 1980s British government documents covering the establishment of the ECSC and EEC three decades before became available. Through the use of Foreign Office, Board of Trade and Cabinet papers in the Public Record Office, the British government’s rather dismal record of decision-making on Europe has been written up by historians such as John Young, Saki Dockrill and others, while economic historians such as Alan Milward and Frances Lynch have tapped into government and economic records in the UK and other European States involved in the integration process. Alan Milward has produced a thesis firmly based and derived from
empirical evidence (drawn from different national archives) to explain the origins and motivations for European integration. In essence the ‘Milward thesis’ states that European integration only occurs and only works when it is actually needed by nation states, there being no fundamental antagonism between European integration (seen in the ECSC and EEC) and the nation state. This stands in marked contrast to the other two types of explanation, both of which rest on the idea that European integration ultimately results in the demise of the nation state and the creation of a new supranational state or Federal United States of Europe. Milward says that supranational
and theories of
organisations were set up by the nation states for their own specific purposes, not as a step towards the submission and eclipse of the nation state within a federal Europe. The fundamental issue is: where does power lie? Whether in the EEC of the 1960s or European Union of 1990s, power remains with the nation states: all decisions are taken by the member states’ governments collectively in the Council of Ministers (either by unanimity or qualified majority voting depending on the issue). The actual extent of surrender, or pooling of national control, to supranational organisations in Brussels decades later are still quite modest and restricted to some, but not all forms of economic activity. The supranational organisation has changed its name from EEC (1958-86) to European Community (l986-91) to European Union since Maastricht, yet it has remained a common or single market primarily concerned with common commercial issues and their related policies. There is, for example, still no such thing as a single common foreign policy for all EU members (although co-ordinated responses are attempted on specific issues). The only policy elements that members have integrated relate to economic or commercial affairs. Milward argues further that European integration, far from advancing the
cause of federation, actually ‘rescued the nation state’ – the supranational organisations ECSC and EEC were originally created by six states (France, Benelux, Italy and West Germany) because of economic necessity and political security. Euro-federalist ideas and movements, according to Milward’s thesis, had nothing at all to do with European integration. He argues that the requirements of economic reconstruction and national rebuilding in Western Europe following World War II, from 1945 onwards, often required international solutions. This was because national governments were not able successfully to pursue their own plans for economic reconstruction in isolation from their neighbours, as they needed access to their West European neighbours’ markets and raw materials (e.g. German coking coal). At the same time, in the late 1940s and early 1950s there was no free trade in Western Europe. Tariffs and quota restrictions to protect national markets were the norm. West European states were mutually dependent economically yet rigged
their own markets for national advantage. Also, national reconstruction plans were very similar in aim (increasing steel production figured prominently in French and others’ schemes for national economic regeneration from 1946). This accounts for the necessity of commercial agreement between states. The Treaty of Paris 1951 established the ECSC, a common market in coal and steel, which resolved these problems and facilitated the attainment of national economic objectives in an international context. Milward argues that when national reconstruction plans depended on eco-
nomic links with West Germany, then integration occurred. An integrated rather than an interdependent organisation was created because of its intrinsic advantages. Milward shows that West German economic revival was crucial in the European economic system – it was the main source of machines and
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machine tools for its continental neighbours and a big consumer of food and steel. Dutch, French, Belgian and other states all needed to restore secure trading connections with West Germany. Their economic recovery and national reconstruction hinged to a large extent on German economic revival (Milward, 1992, pp. 155-67; 1984, pp. 492-502). West Germany’s political future in Europe was also of central importance.
According to Milward, European economic integration took place when rebuilding nation states’ economies after 1945 depended on economic links and agreement with Germany and so intersected with the ‘big question’, i.e. how to fix Germany safely and securely in Western Europe. Then and only then did European integration occur because it was a much more secure, permanent, law-abiding arrangement. Paradoxically, according to Milward’s thesis, far from European integration
being a move towards creating a federal union in Western Europe, it was the mechanism by which a Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) could safely re-emerge as another nation state. The process of European integration was not a first step to subsume Germany or other states in a federation but actually provided the means by which a new German state could be reestablished and co-exist, in the absence of any treaty or formal peace settlement, with those Western neighbours it had invaded, defeated and occupied 10-15 years before. West Germany was only freed from external post-war controls over its steel and coal production (ending the international Ruhr Authority’s restrictions over coal exports from West Germany) within the confines of the ECSC from 1951. Similarly, within the context of the European Defence Community plan of 1950-54 (the failed integrated scheme to solve the vexed issue of German rearmament) under its Bonn Agreements full sovereignty was restored in foreign affairs and national defence from 1955 to the West German state. Lipgens attributes European integration to the influence and lobbying of
the European federalist movements before 1955 and for some political scientists integration once started is seen as an irreversible and inevitable process of transferring power and sovereignty from the nation state to a supranational state. The Milward thesis regards European integration as a creation of nation states for their own national purposes – the most secure means to achieve national economic policy objectives was by integration. For Milward both the Treaty of Paris 1951 (establishing the ECSC) and the Treaties of Rome 1957 (creating the EEC/Euratom) were primarily commercial treaties; the supranational components were there chiefly because of the German question. The value of these three schools of thought as interpretations of the driving
forces behind integration will be assessed in the following chapters, which trace the development of schemes for European integration from 1945.
