ABSTRACT
If there is one actor that comes to mind when one looks for transnationalism in the early European Union, it is the trade unions. In the first place, the trade unions have a long tradition of ‘internationalism’, expressed in transnational associations of labour organizations going back into the nineteenth century. Moreover, they were associated early on with European institutions. Indeed, the unions that supported the Marshall Plan were granted an important consultative position in the Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC). Their role was also institutionally established in the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). Does that make unions transnational movements? In the 1990s, historians have deconstructed the inter-and transnational image of the unions (Strikwerda, 1997; Berger and Smith, 1998; Pasture and Verberckmoes, 1998). In this chapter though, I will rather emphasize those elements in trade union politics where the unions, at least to some extent, transcended national boundaries and acted as a transnational actor in the European space. Based on new archival research, the focus is on the formative decade from the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) to the so-called ‘empty chair’ crisis of 1965, when the French for months – from June 1965 to January 1966 – boycotted the European institutions. However, it is inevitable to situate this period in a larger chronological framework (earlier periods are discussed in Pasture, 2000, 2001a, 2002).
